3 ms·

Great news. Now if only they just did away with the optical drives on MBP's. I have used mine about... twice in three years since owning my current laptop.

code_duck 15y ago
Absolutely, I'd gladly trade this optical drive, which I've used twice in a year, for two more USB ports. Hard to believe that my $2200 MBP has only two USB ports, which constrains me daily, and my $500 Toshiba has four. If Airs can do without the drive, there's no reason MBPs can't as well. They're running the same OS after all.
- thomasgerbe 15y ago
  Agree. I hear people on MacRumors saying the professional laptop should have the most features (thus, the optical drive) but for me, more USB ports and potentially a second HDD would do more for my day-to-day activities than an optical drive.
matthew-wegner 15y ago
You can put another HD (or SSD) in your optical bay: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ Cheap eBay brackets are ~$20 and accomplish the same thing. There are a couple of caveats--here's everything you need to know: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2493938 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2493938
- thomasgerbe 15y ago
  How is the battery life?
  - matthew-wegner 15y ago
    Seems unchanged for me (I added an SSD, so the existing 7200 RPM HD became a rarely-used media drive). I see ~5.5 hours real-world use on a 15" MBP, and my development environment includes a virtualized XP install.
  - joelhooks 15y ago
    I saw some improvement. No hard data though.
- r00fus 15y ago
  Great summary. Last year I did the same (MBP2010) and I outlined all the steps here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=10814085&postcount=12 http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=10814085&post...
- joelhooks 15y ago
  I used the OWC disk-doubler to replace the optical drive in my MBP and love it. The only "gotcha" that I ran into was trying to install from the wrong OS X disk. Apparently MPB needs the version it came with or newer to function.
deleted 15y ago
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code_duck 15y ago

Absolutely, I'd gladly trade this optical drive, which I've used twice in a year, for two more USB ports. Hard to believe that my $2200 MBP has only two USB ports, which constrains me daily, and my $500 Toshiba has four. If Airs can do without the drive, there's no reason MBPs can't as well. They're running the same OS after all.

thomasgerbe 15y ago
Agree. I hear people on MacRumors saying the professional laptop should have the most features (thus, the optical drive) but for me, more USB ports and potentially a second HDD would do more for my day-to-day activities than an optical drive.

matthew-wegner 15y ago

You can put another HD (or SSD) in your optical bay: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/ Cheap eBay brackets are ~$20 and accomplish the same thing. There are a couple of caveats--here's everything you need to know: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2493938 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2493938

thomasgerbe 15y ago
How is the battery life?
- matthew-wegner 15y ago
  Seems unchanged for me (I added an SSD, so the existing 7200 RPM HD became a rarely-used media drive). I see ~5.5 hours real-world use on a 15" MBP, and my development environment includes a virtualized XP install.
- joelhooks 15y ago
  I saw some improvement. No hard data though.
r00fus 15y ago
Great summary. Last year I did the same (MBP2010) and I outlined all the steps here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=10814085&postcount=12 http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=10814085&post...
joelhooks 15y ago
I used the OWC disk-doubler to replace the optical drive in my MBP and love it. The only "gotcha" that I ran into was trying to install from the wrong OS X disk. Apparently MPB needs the version it came with or newer to function.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]