Optical drives

Does your laptop/desktop have an optical drive? If so how often do you use it?

I myself have a Blu-ray drive and I would say I use it occasionally. Mainly for my anime DVDs and CDs. I used to create many custom DVDs for short films but these days, YouTube and Vimeo make it much easier to share those sort of things. I remember my first CD burner used to make lots of coasters.

Certainly we've gone past the days where everything used to be on CDs/DVDs with the advent of online distribution for software and games (Steam, Origin, etc.). And it would seem many laptops are not including them anymore by default.

How about you?

I have an optical drive/burner in all of my pc's and at least the one in my htpc is blueray (others may be too but been that long since ive had any thing to do with them ive forgotten)

but I build by own pc's (htpc included) and use to do a fir bit of copying as once I had a heap of music cd stolen from my car so now originals kept at home and copys go in vehicle (and Im a driver for a living) , well use to now I use digital copys

but for some reason since I put windows 8.1 pro on the htpc the optical driver became pretty useless unless I was playing a movie thru windows media player

so for them reasons I don't seem to use them any more unless im booting software on a new setup

My new laptop doesn't have one at all. I don't mind because I never used one in so long anyway.

My old laptop has one. Im thankful for that because I'm currently converting it into a karaoke player for my mum. I'm just waiting for her discs to arrive (around 400 of them) and then I can transfer them into the old laptop!

My laptop has one, but I don't use it really~ I think I have used it maybe once since I've had this laptop. It's not that I couldn't... I just choose not to. Don't really have much of a purpose to me~

My computer does not have an optical drive, but I got an external Blu Ray drive, so that I can watch titles not available on iTunes, yet want to keep around, or when it is necessary to boot from a disc.

Yep. I have a DVD drive that has been passed down through a couple generations of PCs. Previously the drive was used mainly for Windows installs and the like, but I generally just do that via USB these days. I'll probably keep it around regardless of how rarely it gets used, though.

I'll probably buy a Blu Ray drive at some point though, since I want to start collecting imported copies of my foreign film collection... my preference would be to just buy a decent stand alone player, but not having external sub support would be a minor downer.

In the past, I salivated over the thought of having a Blu Ray writer for the sake of being able to easily archive massive amounts of stuff, but at this point I already have more online (and local) storage available to me than I have any idea what to do with.

I keep mine and originally got in to them for the reason that I had a sh!t load of music cd's pinched once so from then on I copied my discs (music or visual) for reasons of not damaging or wearing originals as well as theft when in any of my vehicles , but these days with all my vehicles having usb n data read (so to speak) I dont use the burners but more so go digital thumb drive or just on the smart phone or lap top

I have a CD Drive! However, I haven't actually put anything into it in over five years. When I build my next system, I think that I'll just get rid of it. I don't even use it for OS installation stuff anymore. USB keys can work for all of that stuff.

I have a CD Drive! However, I haven't actually put anything into it in over five years. When I build my next system, I think that I'll just get rid of it. I don't even use it for OS installation stuff anymore. USB keys can work for all of that stuff.

That's kind of lucky. I used to help doing computer recycling, but they said they did not have much success with USB installs.

That's kind of lucky. I used to help doing computer recycling, but they said they did not have much success with USB installs.

I've heard of similar things. It isn't really luck with me, though. I picked out basically everything in my computer so that I could have a high degree of assurance that it would run with even the most cranky USB installs. This is useful... Since, I have the habit of running my computer as a Hackintosh, and any unreliable usb booting routines can be fatal with one of those.