9 ms·

After several generations of netbooks, people are still pining for optical drives for the one or two times a year you wish you had one? I'd much rather the smal

After several generations of netbooks, people are still pining for optical drives for the one or two times a year you wish you had one? I'd much rather the smaller form factor and a USB key for data transfer.

johnswamps 16y ago
When I built my PC, I was having a problem hooking up my optical drive so I thought "I just want this to work now, I'll hook up the optical drive later". It's been over a year later and I still haven't connected it.
- andrewjshults 16y ago
  I had a very similar experience, although it ended up being that the only reason I didn't reconnect my PC's DVD drive is that I ended up using my macbook pro for ripping DVDs. If you live within the apple world (itunes) this becomes even less of a problem, but I still find having a DVD drive handy. Not to mention it was the only way I found to install the OS X version of diff.
eddanger 16y ago
Very true indeed. I can't remember the last time, if at all, I have used the optical drive on my computer. Over the last few years I've migrated all my music CD, and movie DVD to digital format. I no longer own a DVD player (attached to my TV), nor do I plan on getting a BluRay player. Ah, the age of digital media has arrived.
- jonsen 16y ago
  CD and DVD are digital media.
  - eddanger 16y ago
    True indeed. I suppose I should have said "non-physical media"... Don't get metaphysical on me now :)
zmmmmm 16y ago
The best thing about an optical drive in a laptop is that in many laptops it is a bay so you can easily rip it out and shove a hard drive in there. This is so much more convenient and fast for doing backups or migrating OSes, or just hedging your bets on disk size (small SSD + huge platter is a great combo). Of course, this wouldn't apply to a Mac ...
- gbrindisi 16y ago
  Relevant: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
  - PStamatiou 16y ago
    Yeah I used that optibay to put a second ssd in and raid it with my other ssd in my 17inch mbp. definitely worth it
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      Someone needs to create a filesystem optimized for something like two heterogeneous drives, like a 64GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. It would try to put larger files on the HDD (where storage space and sequential read/write speed are useful and random-access less critical) and smaller files on the SSD (which has better random access). This would rock! You'd have a really zippy laptop with scads of space.
      - pyre 16y ago
        The issue being that by the time such a filesystem became stable enough for people to trust it with their data, SSDs may have already caught up to HDDs in terms of storage capacity.
      - ryanpetrich 16y ago
        ZFS has the ability to use SSDs as cache for larger HDDs (which is close to what you've described)
pmjordan 16y ago
Yeah, absolutely, the optical drive is a waste of space almost all the time. With regard to slow networking, I wonder if a gigabit ethernet/USB adapter like the Belkin F5D5055 would help. Obviously USB 2.0 maxes out at around 30-35MB/s, but if the adapter can actually attain those speeds it should be fast enough when you need a bit more than Wifi. Generally, I'm very tempted to go for the maxed-out version of the 13" MBA. I'll probably take a look at the screen at a retail store though, I'm not keen on the glossy finish, and my old 2006 MacBook has terrible angle dependent colour representation. Going to make this the motivator for launching my first product. :)
- modeless 16y ago
  If you have a quality 802.11n AP then WiFi is actually faster than 100 Mbps Ethernet, making a USB 10/100 Ethernet adapter pointless. That speed isn't theoretical; I'm in a high-rise apartment building and I can see 25 other SSIDs from my couch, but I still have no problems getting >100 Mbps from an AirPort to a MacBook.
  - pmjordan 16y ago
    Yep, if you manage to connect at a nominal 300Mbit/s on Wifi, you can just about scrape 100Mbit/s in practice. You basically need a 40MHz band of 5GHz Wifi, which is probably what you're using, and which is why it's not interfering much with the other APs, most of which probably only broadcast in the 2.4GHz band. Also, the number of available frequency slots in the 5GHz band is much bigger. Too bad the older iPhones don't support it, and most APs can't use both bands simultaneously (current Airport Extremes do!). Still, that's 3-4 times slower than USB (in theory).
    - weaksauce 16y ago
      There is also the protocol overhead associated with each type of communication. USB and ethernet were created with different tradeoffs in mind. On a mildly contested network I believe that ethernet is about 60% efficient due to packet overhead and packet collisions.
stevenp 16y ago
It's interesting -- I got an OptiBay mounting kit for my 17" MacBook Pro, and now I've replaced the optical drive with a 1TB extra hard drive, in addition to the 256GB SSD I've already got. It's awesome to be able to carry my entire iTunes library with me wherever I go. The few times I've needed the optical drive, OptiBay includes an enclsoure for you to put the SuperDrive into, so I just plug it in via USB and I'm good to go. Never been happier with my super-fast machine.
ugh 16y ago
The big question is whether the next generation of MacBook Pros will also drop the optical drive or whether they will wait another year or so. The optical drive has been very much neglected by Apple: there is no Blu-ray drive in any Mac they sell. Removing all optical drives in the next year or so certainly wouldn’t surprise me. (I actually hope that they will do just that. I’m going to buy a 15" MBP next year and I sure would like it to be a bit lighter and with a somewhat bigger battery.)
- sigzero 16y ago
  Apple doesn't like Blu-ray (at this point in time) so I don't think they are neglecting anything (from their point of view).
  - ugh 16y ago
    Let me put it this way: Apple doesn’t seem to believe that Blu-ray will be a standard storage medium for computer users in the next decade or so like DVDs and CDs were before. That might be the reason why they are not exactly eager to ship their computers with a Blu-ray drive. That assessment rings true to me. I might buy a Blu-ray player for my TV but I don’t think I really need it for my laptop. (I might want to watch something on a Blu-ray disc but I’m actually kind of tired of all that physical media. I bought my last CD 18 months ago and my last DVD something like two years ago. I don’t really know how true that is for the rest of the world, though.)
- allwein 16y ago
  My dream MBP is that they drop the optical drive completely, install 128GB of flash for a system drive like the new Airs, and then have an optional 500GB data drive for those who need the additional space. Then they can use all the saved space to either make it lighter or fill it with extra battery (or both!)

johnswamps 16y ago

When I built my PC, I was having a problem hooking up my optical drive so I thought "I just want this to work now, I'll hook up the optical drive later". It's been over a year later and I still haven't connected it.

andrewjshults 16y ago
I had a very similar experience, although it ended up being that the only reason I didn't reconnect my PC's DVD drive is that I ended up using my macbook pro for ripping DVDs. If you live within the apple world (itunes) this becomes even less of a problem, but I still find having a DVD drive handy. Not to mention it was the only way I found to install the OS X version of diff.

eddanger 16y ago

Very true indeed. I can't remember the last time, if at all, I have used the optical drive on my computer. Over the last few years I've migrated all my music CD, and movie DVD to digital format. I no longer own a DVD player (attached to my TV), nor do I plan on getting a BluRay player. Ah, the age of digital media has arrived.

jonsen 16y ago
CD and DVD are digital media.
- eddanger 16y ago
  True indeed. I suppose I should have said "non-physical media"... Don't get metaphysical on me now :)

zmmmmm 16y ago

The best thing about an optical drive in a laptop is that in many laptops it is a bay so you can easily rip it out and shove a hard drive in there. This is so much more convenient and fast for doing backups or migrating OSes, or just hedging your bets on disk size (small SSD + huge platter is a great combo). Of course, this wouldn't apply to a Mac ...

gbrindisi 16y ago
Relevant: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
- PStamatiou 16y ago
  Yeah I used that optibay to put a second ssd in and raid it with my other ssd in my 17inch mbp. definitely worth it
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    Someone needs to create a filesystem optimized for something like two heterogeneous drives, like a 64GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. It would try to put larger files on the HDD (where storage space and sequential read/write speed are useful and random-access less critical) and smaller files on the SSD (which has better random access). This would rock! You'd have a really zippy laptop with scads of space.
    - pyre 16y ago
      The issue being that by the time such a filesystem became stable enough for people to trust it with their data, SSDs may have already caught up to HDDs in terms of storage capacity.
    - ryanpetrich 16y ago
      ZFS has the ability to use SSDs as cache for larger HDDs (which is close to what you've described)

pmjordan 16y ago

Yeah, absolutely, the optical drive is a waste of space almost all the time. With regard to slow networking, I wonder if a gigabit ethernet/USB adapter like the Belkin F5D5055 would help. Obviously USB 2.0 maxes out at around 30-35MB/s, but if the adapter can actually attain those speeds it should be fast enough when you need a bit more than Wifi. Generally, I'm very tempted to go for the maxed-out version of the 13" MBA. I'll probably take a look at the screen at a retail store though, I'm not keen on the glossy finish, and my old 2006 MacBook has terrible angle dependent colour representation. Going to make this the motivator for launching my first product. :)

modeless 16y ago
If you have a quality 802.11n AP then WiFi is actually faster than 100 Mbps Ethernet, making a USB 10/100 Ethernet adapter pointless. That speed isn't theoretical; I'm in a high-rise apartment building and I can see 25 other SSIDs from my couch, but I still have no problems getting >100 Mbps from an AirPort to a MacBook.
- pmjordan 16y ago
  Yep, if you manage to connect at a nominal 300Mbit/s on Wifi, you can just about scrape 100Mbit/s in practice. You basically need a 40MHz band of 5GHz Wifi, which is probably what you're using, and which is why it's not interfering much with the other APs, most of which probably only broadcast in the 2.4GHz band. Also, the number of available frequency slots in the 5GHz band is much bigger. Too bad the older iPhones don't support it, and most APs can't use both bands simultaneously (current Airport Extremes do!). Still, that's 3-4 times slower than USB (in theory).
  - weaksauce 16y ago
    There is also the protocol overhead associated with each type of communication. USB and ethernet were created with different tradeoffs in mind. On a mildly contested network I believe that ethernet is about 60% efficient due to packet overhead and packet collisions.

stevenp 16y ago

It's interesting -- I got an OptiBay mounting kit for my 17" MacBook Pro, and now I've replaced the optical drive with a 1TB extra hard drive, in addition to the 256GB SSD I've already got. It's awesome to be able to carry my entire iTunes library with me wherever I go. The few times I've needed the optical drive, OptiBay includes an enclsoure for you to put the SuperDrive into, so I just plug it in via USB and I'm good to go. Never been happier with my super-fast machine.

ugh 16y ago

The big question is whether the next generation of MacBook Pros will also drop the optical drive or whether they will wait another year or so. The optical drive has been very much neglected by Apple: there is no Blu-ray drive in any Mac they sell. Removing all optical drives in the next year or so certainly wouldn’t surprise me. (I actually hope that they will do just that. I’m going to buy a 15" MBP next year and I sure would like it to be a bit lighter and with a somewhat bigger battery.)

sigzero 16y ago
Apple doesn't like Blu-ray (at this point in time) so I don't think they are neglecting anything (from their point of view).
- ugh 16y ago
  Let me put it this way: Apple doesn’t seem to believe that Blu-ray will be a standard storage medium for computer users in the next decade or so like DVDs and CDs were before. That might be the reason why they are not exactly eager to ship their computers with a Blu-ray drive. That assessment rings true to me. I might buy a Blu-ray player for my TV but I don’t think I really need it for my laptop. (I might want to watch something on a Blu-ray disc but I’m actually kind of tired of all that physical media. I bought my last CD 18 months ago and my last DVD something like two years ago. I don’t really know how true that is for the rest of the world, though.)
allwein 16y ago
My dream MBP is that they drop the optical drive completely, install 128GB of flash for a system drive like the new Airs, and then have an optional 500GB data drive for those who need the additional space. Then they can use all the saved space to either make it lighter or fill it with extra battery (or both!)