TECH NEWS: "MacBook Air, Ultrabook spell doom for optical drive"

[ghosthunter]

[SIZE=4]MacBook Air, Ultrabook spell doom for optical drive[/SIZE]
Brooke Crothers
by Brooke Crothers November 19, 2011 2:31 PM PST


[SIZE=1]HP's new 13-inch Folio Ultrabook. As with the MacBook Air, a built-in optical drive is not an option.
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)[/SIZE]


With Apple likely forgoing optical drives across all or most of its MacBooks, and Ultrabooks doing the same, it's no surprise that the venerable whirring drive will spin away, albeit gradually, into obscurity.

Next to go driveless at Apple is the 15-inch MacBook Air. 9to5Mac says Apple almost brought out a 15-inch Air in late 2010 (but didn't because of a problem with the hinges). Apple now has plans to make this happen next year when Intel's graphics-centric Ivy Bridge processor ships.

Ultrabooks will do their part to hurry the otherwise slow demise of the optical drive. As many as 50 Ultrabooks are expected to debut at CES this year, and all of them will come without the drives, since by definition the design cannot accommodate the bulk of an optical drive.....

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[niky]

Optical drive? Wuzzat? Plays laser-dics?

I've been living without a DVD-ROM or even a CD-ROM on my laptops for the past four years... I think thanks to the advent of netbooks and tablets, the slim optical drive really has gone the way of the dodo already.

And good riddance. Those slim drives are really finicky and unreliable... I mean... desktop optical drives are not that much better, but at least they're replaceable.

[ghosthunter]

Optical drive? Wuzzat? Plays laser-dics?

I've been living without a DVD-ROM or even a CD-ROM on my laptops for the past four years... I think thanks to the advent of netbooks and tablets, the slim optical drive really has gone the way of the dodo already.

And good riddance. Those slim drives are really finicky and unreliable... I mean... desktop optical drives are not that much better, but at least they're replaceable.

Notebook slim DVD/CD internal drives are also replaceable since they already come in a standard form.

Anyway, the only time I used a DVD or CD drive is when I was installing Windows on a new computer, otherwise it's a legacy piece of hardware.

[Ry_Tower]

Hindi ko na din nagagamit masyado DVD/CD ng laptop, PC. Mostly USB drive and slim hard drives na talaga. Mas reliable and consistent performance. Ganun talaga, evolution working at its best. Baka later sobra mura ng USB yan na ang default medium for OS ng new PC's and laptops etc of because of the increasing internet connection, on line na lang pag-download nung mga drivers din like what we can do now naman din.

[greatauror28]

^ Mac OS Lion has been on the usb drive for the past months already ending the DVD reign of installation discs for Apple.

I don't know exactly if i'm ready for a DVD-less laptop because I mainly use them for backup (DVD-burned backup files) in addition to backing up via external HDD. Beyond that, i never see any point in using it as software and driver updates are already OTA.

OT: if the 15" Air will be launched next year, I have to sell my 8-month old 15" MBP. any takers?

[ChunkyLover]

another apple hype... compact and stylish but lacks the power to run most apps... it would be better if they put an i7 quad core extreme processor and a ati crossfire 4gb video card in it...
basic reason why people divert to alienware...

apple tends to tease the customers by giving them a mid range spec.. nothing too slow and nothing too fast...

and IMHO buying thousands of pesos of a loptop without a optical drive and still cant process intensive photoshops... can be counted as a scam :D

[niky]

Uhh... a lot of photographers use Macs. The Air is light, compact, powerful, have a seven hour battery life, run Photoshop 11' and can process raw camera files. And the 15" that's coming out next year will have the i7. I don't know what more you'd want from a travelling photographer's laptop.

Besides, if you're buying an ultra-slim, you're not buying it for the same reasons you buy a bulky high-end gaming laptop...

[ghosthunter]

^ Mac OS Lion has been on the usb drive for the past months already ending the DVD reign of installation discs for Apple.

I don't know exactly if i'm ready for a DVD-less laptop because I mainly use them for backup (DVD-burned backup files) in addition to backing up via external HDD. Beyond that, i never see any point in using it as software and driver updates are already OTA.

If you still feel the need for a DVD/CD drive, you can always opt for an external slim drive for those rare occasions that you need to burn a disc. Ever since I started having a portable PC (I started with netbooks) a few years ago, its always have been a without an optical drive so I really do not feel the need for it (short of installing the OS).

[ghosthunter]

Uhh... a lot of photographers use Macs. The Air is light, compact, powerful, have a seven hour battery life, run Photoshop 11' and can process raw camera files. And the 15" that's coming out next year will have the i7. I don't know what more you'd want from a travelling photographer's laptop.

Besides, if you're buying an ultra-slim, you're not buying it for the same reasons you buy a bulky high-end gaming laptop...

Yup, I agree. For photography use, most people would be willing to have a slower laptop if it means it's lightweight and small to fit in a convenient & comfortable traveling bag. Generally they just need the laptop to backup their photos from their cameras and maybe send those same photos to the internet. Rarely do you need a laptop to do editing work that requires a more powerful PC.

[oliver1013]

Pano naging mabagal ang Mac? Lahat ng kakilala kong photographer naglipatan na sa mac for editing/ processing purposes..

[ChunkyLover]

Uhh... a lot of photographers use Macs. The Air is light, compact, powerful, have a seven hour battery life, run Photoshop 11' and can process raw camera files. And the 15" that's coming out next year will have the i7. I don't know what more you'd want from a travelling photographer's laptop.

Besides, if you're buying an ultra-slim, you're not buying it for the same reasons you buy a bulky high-end gaming laptop...

my mbp17 has the same weight as my alienware...
bulky but same..

processors are not solely responsible for a loptops performance
graphics card... is the downfall of any mac.. for a 130k+ mac... only 512mb to 1gb vc?

[oliver1013]

Ang alienware Dell na may ari, hindi na yan tulad ng alienware dati...as per the purist though..

[greatauror28]

my mbp17 has the same weight as my alienware...
bulky but same..

processors are not solely responsible for a loptops performance
graphics card... is the downfall of any mac.. for a 130k+ mac... only 512mb to 1gb vc?

processor, RAM, HDD and graphics card all contribute to the total system performance of any computer be it Mac or PC.
for me, the 512 up to 1gb memory of VC included in MBP are sufficient enough to run photo and video editing software with no effect of sluggishness ( i do CS5 with plenty of images loaded, photo merge works OK and plug-ins like Topaz adjust also ran like hell ).

And should you demand more graphics, there's always the Mac Pro line waiting for you

[niky]

my mbp17 has the same weight as my alienware...
bulky but same..

processors are not solely responsible for a loptops performance
graphics card... is the downfall of any mac.. for a 130k+ mac... only 512mb to 1gb vc?

How old is your MBPro?

Video card memory isn't everything for photo-processing or even video processing. The reason a lot of media companies and practitioners like to use Macs is they have a good form factor and they use what processor power and RAM there is more effectively.

My Netbook has as many GHz of processing power as my brother's Air... but there's no doubting that it's a much better processing tool for photoshopping than mine is.

And this is from someone who doesn't use Macs because he thinks the lack of a Mouse 2 button is stupid.

Obviously, lacking a more powerful video card limits your ability to play the more processor intensive 3D games, but again, different market.

-

In the end... the choice of Mac or Windows Laptop for photos is kind of a non-argument. There are great Macs, there are great Windows laptops... while the architecture of Mac's OS X is arguably greatly superior to that piece of garbage Vista (hell... everything is) and somewhat superior to Windows 7, if you configure Windows 7 right and run the right photo software on a good laptop, you can do the same thing a Mac user can. But it'll take a bit more tweaking on your end to get everything just right.

[ChunkyLover]

100k+ no optical drive

[ghosthunter]

100k+ no optical drive

100k++ price tag is what you get if you want a laptop that would be a "do-all" machine, including a fast cpu, fast gaming grade gpu, massive hdd/ssd, long-ish battery life, large screen, etc.

But fortunately, each laptop has it's target segment so there are business laptops, student laptops, gaming laptops, etc. which their own price ranges. So for ones with less budging wallets, we can still have the laptops that answers our personal needs & requirements.

[boybi]

100k+ no optical drive

it's about time. did you felt sad too when the floppy was replaced by optical drives?

[samcoy]

If my memory serve me right, I read an article saying that when Apple launched iTunes it made recording companies selling CD's suffer. Di na kelangan ng optical drive, download ka na lang music and other medias online. Galing talaga ng idea. Di ko lang sure kung exclusive lang sa iTunes pag Mac. Di Mac ang gamit ko eh. Hehe!

[umi001]

When I assembled our desktop PC a year and a half ago, I didn't include an internal optical drive. When I need to access CDs/DVDs, I use an external drive, which we had previously bought for our Aspire 1825PT. In the time since, I've not really felt the absence - I've used the drive maybe three, four times in a year and half. USB flash drives, Internet software, music and video downloads, and CD/DVD virtualization have eliminated the need to have an optical drive around at all times.

I do feel that, this time, it isn't Apple that started the trend - it's the netbooks and similar (though non-Atom) ultraportables which have shown the manufacturers that an optical drive is no longer a necessary piece of equipment in computers.

[niky]

it's about time. did you felt sad too when the floppy was replaced by optical drives?

Hahaha... nabwisit nga ako when people started moving away from floppies... all my old DOS games and game saves... obsolete!

Times move. The 5" floppy... dead. The 3.5" floppy... dead. Videodisc... dead. Now those damn overpriced, stupidly cheap to produce CDs... I hope they all die in hell.

Then we can go back to the best ever data storage device...



How I miss the Commodore 64...

-

Really... given how cheap USBs are nowadays... when we give out data (and I've seen other companies do this, also...), we often do it with USB drives.