To Disk Drive or not to Disk Drive

[Zac Jovanovic]

Personally I stopped using them around 2008. Internet is good here, and there's tons of movable storage that's cheap, fast and easy to use.

In the last couple years I stopped putting them in the PCs I build by default, sometimes people ask for one and most of the time conversation goes something like: "Sure, no problem, that's maybe 20$ extra. But are you really gonna use it? When was the last time you used your old one?" and they're like "Hmmm... Well, there was that one time in high school when I got that DVD with a book... I see your point".

On a related topic I firmly believe that sticking to discs is a big part of why we can't have nice things, mostly by enabling scumbag retailers to make crazy amounts of money by being a sale blocking cancer on the industry.

But still, it is inevitable Mr. Anderson. Even after Sony's clever little stunt I doubt we'll be seeing many games available on discs in 2 years time or so from now.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

No, because I want backwards compatibility with old games (and I'm not going to copy them all to my computer), I want the ability to watch DVD films and series on my computer and I still NEED the ability to write discs of my own for work.

 

[felbot]

well of course I want a disk drive, how else am I supposed to play games? steam is shit and the other download services are just worse version of steam.

 

[teqrevisited]

Until we have internet service that isn't broken every other day and arbitrarily limited by the provider then physical media will always be better for me. I've backed up all of the games that I've downloaded because the process of actually downloading them is painful to say the least. If I want to download and play a game that's 20GB+ and I start downloading it on Monday I might get to sit down and play it by the time Wednesday gets here.

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

No disk drive. No way to wipe the computer by reformatting it with an OS disc.

You use a bootable USB with an OS of choice, this isn't exactly new tech

 

[veloper]

The dvd drive doesn't need to be integrated, you could get an external drive when you change your mind.

 

[laggyteabag]

Well it is really entirely dependent on your download speed, like it has been mentioned before, games have been getting bigger and bigger, and if you need to rely on your download speed being fast to get new games and your download speed is just so slow, then it is not really a viable choice for you. I get around 800-900kb/s when downloading a game on Steam, whereas my friends who live less than a mile away are getting speeds up to 8mb/s. I still buy games at retail sometimes for my PC, mostly because it is sometimes just quicker to get a game on the disk and install it that way instead of spending X amount of hours downloading a huge 30GB game (im looking at you Max Payne 3). Although nowadays, most games have regular (and quite large) updates, when I installed Battlefield 3 from my disk I still had to download updates which ended up being just as large as the game itself in total.

 

[DoPo]

I keep my disc drives, but for data backup. I don't believe in relying on offsite backup. If I can't get on the 'net, it does me no good. Thats why I double up on backup, and discs are my best tool since unless they get microwaved or snapped or scratched to hell I won't lose the data.

Erm, what about an external HDD or even a bunch of flash drives? I'd even suggest getting a NAS but that would be slightly more expensive - an external HDD is probably the best option for backups - discs seem to be too cumbersome and too slow.

I rebuilt my computer in October, and didn't even bother with a DVD drive.

Same here. I bought a PC two weeks ago and when I got to the optical drive, I went "...eh, no need". I don't really have much of a need for one myself - at most, I'd say it's for installing Windows, since it takes slightly longer to put it onto a USB drive and install it from there than just popping the disc in. But that's just me.

Its a big problem in the long term.

No disk drive. No way to wipe the computer by reformatting it with an OS disc.

USB booting. Also, if you want to wipe a computer, I'd just make a snapshot of the OS when installed then recover back to that. Another good option is an ongoing backup system - I'd say - incremental plus periodic full image would be really good, say - daily incremental backups, plus monthly full backup milestones. And you can save space by keeping only the milestones plus the incremental updates for the latest one or if pressed for space - first snapshot plus the latest image and backups.

There you go - options. Of course, there are also options to boot from the HDD but that's slightly more involved, so I just went with the really easy ones.

 

[Tom_green_day]

I'll say it here, if gaming completely ditches discs then I'll completely ditch gaming. I love the feel of the discs and the box with the blurb and the art and the manual, and one of the best parts for me of gaming is going into a shop and browsing through what they have and reading the boxes and stuff. Digital-only downloads will just take away that magic from the whole thing.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

I don't think we are at that point where we should be abandoning disk drives yet, digital distribution is a thing, but disc copies still sell more (in general, not on any one platform).

Not to mention, that getting a blu-ray drive seems like a smart investment(no dedicated blu ray players, 1080p monitors are cheaper than 1080p TVs, also TV+PC=gaming and media bliss).

Also, nothing beats installing KoTOR II and having to wrestle with the dodgy setup.

In addition, disc drives are like, £10 a pop(Blu-Rays are about £40-£60, but still worthwhile).

 

[Megacherv]

*ahem*

The PSPgo

Need one really say more than this?

 

[gunny1993]

I haven't used one for about 2 years, only reason you would ever want one is for really old tech that doesn't have downloadable drivers.

Disc drives take up huge amounts of space relative to how useful they are (this is very important for laptops). And other than the situation i have above there isn't a single thing i can think of that you can't get around with a small amount of thought.

I permanently have a USB with a bootable OS and another USB with a bunch of drivers (Always make sure you have network card drivers otherwise you can't connect to the internet XD)

Only reason I can see discs staying around is the same reason as always. i.e. 3rd world countries (anyone who has an ISP that imposes download limits lives in a 3rd world country). But for anyone with a uncapped download limit and speeds above 6 megabit a second has no reason to use them.

(This is all relative to PCs not consoles, Given that they run on old tech it's fitting that old ideas should apply to them)


Also external disc drives are a cheap and convenient solution to this problem.

 

[Yopaz]

For desktop systems, it's easy enough to add a DVD drive if you want to, they only cost $20 or so, so removing them doesn't save you a ton of money. Price is only really a factor if you are talking about BluRay drives, and only consoles use BluRay discs for software distribution, on computers BluRay is only really useful for watching movies.

My friend built his desktop with a small chassis so there's actually no room for a disk drive. Still, it's a PC. You can easily fix the issue of not having a disc drive through the magic of USB.

OT: For laptops and living room computers disc drives is a waste of space. I do use the one on my desktop at times, but I wouldn't have the biggest issues if I had to ditch mine. I use it to rip music and little more. Once I've ripped the songs I rarely use the disc afterwards which would have meant I could as well have gone completely digital. Sadly most of those services offer bad quality so I will continue to rip it myself.

That said for consoles this would be a bigger problem on consoles. They don't have the option between the various services. Xbox users buy their digital games form Microsoft and Playstation users buy their digital games from Sony.

Then there are still those of us who don't really have uncapped, stable high speed internet connections. Coverage here is about 97% which is great, but still leaves out a few thousand.

 

[Raziel]

Every computer I buy still has them. Sure they might only be rarely used. But its actually the expensive computers that remove them (apple). As for the a console. The only way I would ever buy a xbo without the disc drive is if its like $200. Thats would be cheap enough to get just so I can play the handful of M$ exclusives, everything else would be done on my ps4. It might not be terrible to only have to download 2 games a year.

I think Consumers should wait and see how this net neutrality turns out because if Internet providers start to kill your speed because your downloading to much you might want a disc drive.

Thats not even a new thing. There are providers who have been throttling top percentage users for awhile now. The new thing I'm worried about is flat out data caps like the phones have. Although I also expect to hear from comcast any time about their new internet packages. The basic connection or the premium version that will support streaming and gaming.

Not that my internet connection is good enough to download 40 gb crap anyway. 2 days or more to download something so I don't have to take 40 minutes to buy it at the store is a NOT a CONVENIENCE. Not to mention the constant lag when playing online. I'm glad I don't have an XBO. I'd hate to have to decide if I can risk buying an online only game like titanfall and then have it be terrible to play because of my connection.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

The thing I don't get is that one can *have* an optical drive and still use digital/cloud services. But this also means they have the option of using a physical disc...you know, the format that movies bought in stores come in, and that the majority of album sales are still sold in.

The PSP Go flopped, the Vita isn't doing that well and the discless XBone won't be any different. It'll sell a few but it won't be enough to be done with discs. Discs represent physical ownership, give immediate access and can be sold on. Cloud based services only let you access your content as long as you toe their line, have a network connection, pay them money and so on.

 

[kilenem]

Every computer I buy still has them. Sure they might only be rarely used. But its actually the expensive computers that remove them (apple). As for the a console. The only way I would ever buy a xbo without the disc drive is if its like $200. Thats would be cheap enough to get just so I can play the handful of M$ exclusives, everything else would be done on my ps4. It might not be terrible to only have to download 2 games a year.

I think Consumers should wait and see how this net neutrality turns out because if Internet providers start to kill your speed because your downloading to much you might want a disc drive.

Thats not even a new thing. There are providers who have been throttling top percentage users for awhile now. The new thing I'm worried about is flat out data caps like the phones have. Although I also expect to hear from comcast any time about their new internet packages. The basic connection or the premium version that will support streaming and gaming.

Not that my internet connection is good enough to download 40 gb crap anyway. 2 days or more to download something so I don't have to take 40 minutes to buy it at the store is a NOT a CONVENIENCE. Not to mention the constant lag when playing online. I'm glad I don't have an XBO. I'd hate to have to decide if I can risk buying an online only game like titanfall and then have it be terrible to play because of my connection.

A game that I really want ,that is online only, is The Crew. Which sucks because I play a game similar to it that, Need For Speed world. I can't play at my parents house because the Internet is really bad. It drops the connection every know then and kicks me out of the game.

 

[Parasondox]

That I don't fully know but then again I am on the side of NO.

It's like saying, we will ditch USBs for the Cloud. Huge problem with that, not everywhere in the world has internet to access the cloud to get your stored data which makes USB the better option. Microsoft is only using the "no disk" option because they have to pay a fee to their rivals Sony for using Blu-Ray. Also another down side, the price for downloading online games won't really decrease much as they would do with used game's in gaming stores. Well why don't they go back to DVD drives? Well DVD drives don't store as much data as Blu-Ray, which is why you see many Xbox 360 games come with 2 disk.

 

[Worgen]

I don't use my dvd drive much on my pc but I like having it. I have too many discs to ignore it, plus even with a fast connection, its still not as fast as installing something from a dvd.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Whats the benefit of not having a disc drive besides a possible small price reduction? I just dont see how removing an option is good especially since CDS/DVD/BLU-Rays are still widely used unlike when floppy discs were dropped.

I can see why the Xbox One would go that route they can go back to their original plans then if enough people buy into it.

 

[ForumSafari]

Whats the benefit of not having a disc drive besides a possible small price reduction?

Weight and thickness, the disk drive being one of the thickest components in a laptop. It also frees up internal connectors to do other things with, the Thinkpad and some other business lines can have hard drives or additional batteries fitted there.

OT: I'm probably not representative since I'm an IT administrator but I haven't used a disk outside of work for years except to load old game off of.