How Much Better Would a 15-17" Laptop be Without an Optical Drive?

[andras artois]

Well? With pretty much everything being able to be run off usb memory sticks its starting to seem pointless to include them.

Without one you could fit better cooling, better graphics or more HD space.

Whats everyone else's opinion?

[LowSky]

15-17" Laptops are desktop replacements. Not to mention Movies and games don't come on Flash drives yet. What are there owners supposed to do then?

[Jesus_Valdez]

Well, In my opinion one reason to buy a laptop with a big screen is in order to watch movies, and if you remove the optical drive you are just making things a little more difficult.

[radddi]

I completely agree with the last two posts. The only situation in which I contemplate a driveless laptop is if it's a small one - such as netbooks or Thin and Lights (11 - 14 in).

:popcorn:

By the way, I have NEVER seen large laptops without optical drives anyway. Although I have come to the idea of replacing optical drives with extra batteries... (don't know whether such replacements exist, though).

[samalex]

My thought is why not get an optical drive if you're investing in a 15" to 17" laptop. A laptop to support the screen has large enough to support the drive, and unless you keep a CD in there it isn't using any power plus they're very light.

It's easier than lugging around a USB/Firewire CD-Rom drive for those few times when it's worth having one. And trying to add one internally aftermarket would be a costly PITA.

Sam

[andras artois]

What about if games were downloaded (eg steam) and films etc were bought off iTunes or similar?

Or is it just me that doesn't like disks anymore?

[Dr. C]

There is a good case for this. I have a laptop that has both DVD R / CD RW optical drive and a 3.5in floppy drive. Last time I used the optical drive was to install Lucid. This could have been accomplished using a USB memory stick.

Since installing Lucid the use was:

Floppy Drive 1x
Optical Drive 0x

If one needs to read optical media or floppies for that matter there is always an external USB drive.

[Jesus_Valdez]

What about if games were downloaded (eg steam) and films etc were bought off iTunes or similar?

Or is it just me that doesn't like disks anymore?
Well, not everybody has a bandwidth connection, and sometimes is handy to have a physical copy.

[samalex]

Well I may not be a good one for this debate then because I still prefer having a floppy drive as well, even though they're about useless anymore. The last desktop system I used at home had both a 3.5" and 5.25" drive because I still have stocks of floppies from days past in both formats (got into computing alittle too late for 8" drives).

So I'll hold onto my CD-ROM as long as I can :)

Sam

[chriswyatt]

Depends on whether you use CDs/DVDs, as simple as that. If you watch a lot of DVDs and CDs on the go, you want an optical drive. If you only use CDs / DVDs at home you might want to just use an external drive. If you don't use CDs and DVDs at all then don't even bother buying an optical drive.

I think optical media is gradually becoming obsolete, I still use my optical drive a lot though.

[swoll1980]

If I'm buying a full sized laptop, I want dvd drives, card readers, and any other drives you can think of. What's the point in it? They are hardly portable anyways.

[andras artois]

But isn't carrying or using a bunch of dvd's a bigger pain than ripping them and just putting them on a portable hard drive?

Also with the space saved if you did remove it how much longer could a battery charge last if the space was taken up by a bigger battery?

[Dr. C]

Well I may not be a good one for this debate then because I still prefer having a floppy drive as well, even though they're about useless anymore. The last desktop system I used at home had both a 3.5" and 5.25" drive because I still have stocks of floppies from days past in both formats (got into computing alittle too late for 8" drives).

So I'll hold onto my CD-ROM as long as I can :)

Sam

A very good case to keep floppy drives around, but I fail to see the argument for an optical drive. The 3.5in floppy has seen the emergence and obsolescence of many a format in its quarter century in existence.

[Ebere]

I think optical media is gradually becoming obsolete, I still use my optical drive a lot though.

I don't think video rental places are going to be going extinct any time soon.

And there's always the videos at the library.

While I could forsee a day when you take your cell phone, ipod, usb stick, whatever, into the video rental store and they load up the movie...

Neither is likely to move to usb sticks anytime in the near future. As much because of theft, as for any other reason.

That leaves DVDs as the best media for the purpose, for now.

[LowSky]

people buy 15-17" laptops because they want a big screen that they can watch a movie on from the couch in between IMing their friends on facebook. The people rarely take their computer anywhere but to another room in the house.

People buy 11-14" laptops to use for work, usually at the office, sometimes at home and everywhere in between.

In both cases most people want the access to a optical drive "just in case" and having an external is something most people do not want.


Way back in about 2002 Dell used to make latops where you could swap out the Optical or Floppy drive for an additional battery. It was a great idea, except for the extra weight, and the fact that the retaining clips wouldn't be strong enough after a few uses and the battery or drive would slide out of the PC.