I have a not-huge-but-still-sizable CD collection that I’ve planned on ripping to FLAC for months. I also happen to have a laptop that is in its dying days. So, I need to buy a new computer but, for completely unrelated reasons that I won’t discuss here, I probably won’t be able to do so for the next few months, perhaps not before next year.
While I was recently having a look at the new stuff, I realized with horror that a majority of laptops don’t have CD/DVD drives anymore. The thread I linked to has revived my worries.
So, how long can I postpone my purchase until the clerk tells me “Sorry Sir, you’ll never find a computer with a CD drive nowadays” ? Does desktop/laptop make a difference ?
I pulled that trigger. Similar circumstances - my desktop died last fall. I opted to go for a laptop, and all the ones that had the power and video capability that I wanted did not come with a DVD drive, at least not within my spending range.
However, due to a series of questionable computer purchases throughout the years (my basement is a PC graveyard) I have an external DVD drive that works quite well. It doesn’t do me much good if I’m mobile with my laptop, but I come to embrace the memory stick generation. If it’s a matter of wanting to rip CD’s I’d bet you could find an external drive for chicken feed these days.
Windows 95 was the first Microsoft OS primarily installed from CD. In Windows 10 (2014) they dropped native support for USB floppy drives.
Windows Vista (2006) was the first version to be primarily installed from network resources. Extrapolating this we get 2025 as the year where it could become difficult to read a CD with computers commonly running at your home.
However, there still seems to be demand for read-only external storage media, and no suitable successor to CD/DVD is on the horizon. Maybe with industrial-size databases storable on a pound of plastic, we’ve already reached optimal cost/benefit-ratio for digital archives.
I’m guessing somewhere between 5 and 10 years. Ten years ago, when the first MacBook Air came out (without an optical drive), I thought the idea was nuts. Fast forward to today, and I haven’t even touched a CD or DVD in at least three years. (I know I’m somewhat unusual in that regard, but I was surprised at how quickly and naturally I adapted. I didn’t intend or try to go optical-media-less. I just never needed it.) That said, that was 10 years ago, so I think it’ll take close to another 10 years (maybe a bit less) for them to disappear from your standard computer set-up. As said above, you can always get an external drive (which is what I have, just in case.)
You can always purchase an external DVD drive that inputs through a USB port. They’ve gotten pretty cheap because, nowadays, there is a low demand for them.
The title says “computers”, but all the discussion so far has been about laptops. I can’t see desktop cases being made any time soon without the space for at least a couple of optical drives, as space isn’t at such a premium there as it is with laptops. Hell, you can still buy floppy disc drives!
They’ll be gone from laptops for the most part quite soon, as optical discs are rapidly becoming a niche product.
I was shopping for a desktop case last weekend and a good number of them are already missing a 5.25" drive cages for optical drives. You can buy them separately but it’s not necessarily a standard feature any longer. Heck, many of the cases don’t even have an opening in the front for an optical drive. The front of the case is either a solid run of aluminum or else is completely mesh for fans.
For that matter, many come with limited space for mechanical hard drives; you have a spot for two in the bottom of the case and then several spots to mount solid state drives on the case wall. Again, you CAN buy additional drive cages but they’re not standard.
I’m sure you’ll have the option for some time to come, especially for office machines where legacy software is more common, but the common set up is moving towards not wasting the space in your tower and just pulling an external DVD drive out of the closet the couple times you ever need one.
I bought a powerhouse desktop less than a year ago. We had upgraded to 1Gbps fiber internet and I wanted to get full use and make a HTPC. It did come with a tiny slot DVD (could not get a blu-ray even when selecting what I wanted on it). So, while it does have a slot, it is not a standard 5.25", so I would only be able to put a very specific optical drive in it (if this one broke).
I did add a USB external drive.
So for the most part optical drives in most PCs are not standard anymore (my work laptop does not have a drive), but you will be able to add external ones (and the blu ray I got is very small, so very portable, for only $80) for quite a while.
I “build my own” desktop computers. (I.e., buy components and put 'em together).
I haven’t built one with an included optical drive in five years.
At the time I decided to go that way, I bought a USB portable DVD burner and it’s served just fine for installation media (e.g., initial OS installation) and media ripping as needed.
The US government has an aversion to flash drives, as long as that’s true there will be companies mass producing options with optical drives.
But for the consumer market, it’s almost over. OEMs can save a few bucks by not including one, and anyone who has legacy requirements can use an external drive. I’m surprised there are as many computers on the market as there are that still include them as standard equipment.
I’ve seen newly purchased Dell desktop computers in the office that still have 9-pin serial ports and PS2 ports for the keyboard and mouse and both of those have been obsolete for ten or fifteen years. So I think optical drives will be available at least as an option for a good long time.
Yeah, I can see it for office machines that are still relying on a copy of MS Office someone bought in 2006. But then DVD drives can easily be sold as external devices so maybe there’ll be less pressure to keep them standard. I suppose the real barrier is convincing the office manager that it’s “okay” if the computer doesn’t have an optical drive.
Of course, there’s probably offices out there with a legitimate need for one since perhaps they still burn a lot of CD/DVDs for some reason.
Within the last year I re-ripped all of my CDs to FLAC using a pair of external USB drives. As many others have said external drives will be available for a long time, and if you don’t care about Bluray, you can find external CD/DVD drives for around $25.
A 12X CD drive’s top speed is about 1.2MB/sec, which is not enough to stress USB 2, which has a top speed of 40-60MB/sec. So, you’re not giving anything up as far as speed.
I will say that you’ll still be able to buy a newly manufactured internal or external drive that will read CDs and DVDs in 20 years. I expect it will also read Blurays and whatever the next 10x denser optical storage disk is (which will be the same size for compatibility and human-usability reasons).
When I bought my current laptop 4 years ago I made sure it had an optical drive. The only thing I’ve ever used it for was ripping CDs. Even the one time I thought about digging out an old game CD and installing it I went to GOG instead and bought the download version for $5 just so I wouldn’t have hassle with it.
If you get an external optical drive you can connect it to any future device as long as it has a USB port. USB isn’t going away any time soon, and even when it starts to go away you’ll be able to get an adapter. So that external drive should last you 20 years.
Maybe, 20 years in the future, when no computers offer internal optical drives, there will be a revival, just like vinyl LPs. There will be disk-nuts who claim that all data is better if it comes from a CD or DVD!