Necessity of an Optical Drive and USB3.0

how necessary is an optical drive these days? and if you buy an ultrabook and look to wipe your computer and load the OS yourself, will the provide you with some sort of download link for the OS?

and are USB 3.0 ports a must have for a new laptop now? or is it still a while before we actually start using the speed it can provide?

 

i use my USB as a boot drive that i can install windows from. i traded my optical drive in for a HDD bay. we can download drivers online anywas, so really, i personally had no need for a CD drive. not too many drives uses USB 3.0 yet, most still use 2.0,but a good thing to have for the future

 

The DVD is up to you. USB 3 can give a very good boost to speeds while transferring files

 

USB 3 is great to have even if you don't need it right now. Also I don't have an optical drive and don't miss it either. Installing from a USB key is a lot faster anyway.

 

Optical drives are completely unncessary. IMO USB 3.0, while yes for large file transfers is just as quick as e-SATA, on small files it is nowhere near as fast as e-SATA.

 

If you frequently use a 3.0 external USB storage then USB 3.0 make a difference, otherwise it is not much a improvement.

Cheap USB 3.0 flash drive is not that faster than 2.0 ones. And shelling out $2-3/GB for flash drive is kind of meh..

 

how do you install an OS using a USB boot drive?

 

Your laptop must support booting from USB and installing the OS using like a universal installer program like this.

 

It is extremely easy. Go to the link in my sig. You download the Windows 7 ISO for the version you want, then you download and run the Microsoft USB/DVD download tool to put it on the USB drive and make it bootable in one easy step.

 

It depends. USB 3.0 is no doubt nice to have, but you can get by pretty well with good old 2.0. There are USB 3.0 accessories these days, most commonly external hard drives, but almost everything supports USB 2.0 as well. And aside from storage devices, there's little in use that really takes advantage of 3.0's speed. Personally, I'd be bummed if a new laptop I was going to buy didn't have it, but if it were enough better in other areas, I might still forgo USB 3.0.

I do have USB 3.0 on my desktop (but not my laptop). It was kind of fast for my WD MyBook external drive, but the MyBook enclosure was unreliable (as seen on many Amazon reviews), so I freed the hard drive and now use it as an internal one. My only remaining external drive is USB 2.0, so I'm no longer actually using USB 3.0 at all. So, it's certainly not "must-have" for me.

Optical, it depends on how many optical discs you use. You can use USB to install OS'es. But there's also software, movies, and music that come on optical discs, and it can be a pain to migrate all that (sometimes next-to-impossible with DRM). I could probably get by without an optical drive in a new laptop, but that's because I already have them in my current laptop and desktop. I still install software that came on CDs (although almost all of what I buy now is digital), rent movies on DVDs (cheaper than Netflix for what I watch), and occasionally buy audio CDs (can be a good deal if they're used). So, your mileage will vary. It also depends on where you lived - if I lived in Canada, where a lot of ISPs have data caps, I'd probably be buying nearly all my software on discs.

It also helps if your USB drive doesn't suck. Most USB drives these days support installing OS'es from them, but it's still possible to find ones that don't work well with it. I'd check either the feature list or reviews of the USB drive to make sure someone has successfully done that. The HP-branded PNY USB 2.0 drive I bought last year proved to be a bust for OS installation (and speed, for that matter), and I would've been much better off with a Kingston USB drive or DVDs.

As a result, I've thus far stuck with the tried-and-true DVD method... certainly not glamorous and I'm sure not as fast as USB. Once I finally get around to buying another USB drive - I hardly use them these days - maybe I'll upgrade.

 

I've found alot of new HP's don't support booting from USB which is ridiculous because I had 7 year old ThinkPads that supported booting from USB.

Point in case, don't buy a cheap flash drive, PNY + HP = ?

 

i'm not to sure you can install from usb on usb 3 ports as the os and os installer might/don't have the drivers to support it.

 

Depends in the USB 3.0 is part of the chipset, which only Ivy Bridge supports native USB 3.0. All Sandy Bridge laptops should not be able to boot from USB 3.0 port as they are 3rd party controllers.

 

I guess I will go against the crowd and say that i still believe optical drives are necessary. For me, I have older games on disc (old command & conquer series, etc) that while i could backup some other way, it is just easier keeping the disk on my shelf. Ive also backed up most of my music collection on cds, burned some of my favourite movies on dvd, and made backups of my important documents. I have all these files on a portable usb drive and have some in the cloud, but i believe in the redundancy department of redundancy. You can never have too many backups, and optical drives provide a very cheap way to do so.

 

While that may be true, even in those usage cases there's rarely a need to use an optical disk when you're not at your desk. When you're at your desk, you can easily use a $20 external ODD (Asus has some nice and cheap and reliable ones) for anything you need, without having to carry dead weight around with you.

 

Agreed, but here is another really simple example. I had to travel with my sager this past week. While at a friends house, we wanted to watch a few episodes of Battlestar Galactica, which he had on disc. Of course, within 10-15 min I am sure I could have a digital copy (via completely legal means of course), but it was easy to just toss the disc in and watch.

I agree that optical drives are now redundant and are taking a backseat to digital, but I personally don't want to see them go away. Slot loading drives help conserve space and don't add much extra heat. The only argument is to save space; when one of these ultraportables uses that space saving for a decent GPU or to allow me to upgrade the machine, then i might reconsider.

 

The scenario is uncommon because how can your friend have disc and no way to play them .

 

Roomate was watching a movie with his girlfriend, but I do see your point.

I suppose my main point is I have yet to see a good reason for doing away with optical drives. While they may be redundant, they are still useful (imho)