I read this article over at TechCrunch the other day about the eventual demise of the optical drive. It rung home, not because I haven’t used my optical drive, but because I just used it this past weekend.
I had traveled back to Ohio for a friend’s wedding reception but ended up staying for more than two weeks as my girlfriend lost her grandmother. In the part of Ohio that she’s from there isn’t much to be had in the way of reliable internet. That meant no Netflix and no access to video I have stored on my network drive. I had to…watch DvDs. It was awful.
Seriously, though, using an optical drive can be kinda brutal. It’s hot, loud, and drains your battery much faster than spinning a hard drive does. It can’t be too long before we’ll see widespread adoption of driveless laptops like the Macbook Air. There is still something about that specific machine that makes me a little nervous, but I treat my current laptop with such care I don’t think a change would be too scary.
