Looks like Apple’s attempt of dropping the optical drive from its MacBook Air was quite a swift move. It’s now the year 2008, and who needs the optical drive on their ultraportable notebook anyway?
Allow me to explain. To what point and purpose do we need optical drives on ultraportables for? Watching DVDs? Well, one can actually cram a couple of movies onto a flash drive instead. What’s more is that there are no moving parts (besides the electrons, of course) in flash memory, helping you to conserve your precious battery life. I’m certain that battery life is a major constituent to what makes a good portable notebook. Traditional optical drives have discs gyrating at a couple of hundred RPMs per minute. Now that’s one mean juice sucker. Plus, you actually even get a performance boost via USB for your viewing experience.
The next challenge: software installation. Much software requires an optical drive in order to install itself, no doubt. But now, it is possible to find these installers on the internet to be downloaded readily. Furthermore, much to the iPhone’s delight, many programs are now web-based, not requiring any form of installation. Ever heard of a web-based productivity suite?
What about disc burning?! How often do you burn discs while on the road may I ask? Most of us resort to a portable HDD or thumb drive to store our data anyway. The CD-RW, or DVD+/-RW, for that matter, is quickly being alienated as a “modern” floppy disc. Simply redundant. If you really insist on burning, take your ultraportable back home with you and count on your 16x Dual Layer DVD writer instead.
So finally, the conundrum of how to take ultraportables to an even portable level has been worked out. Eliminating the optical drive from a laptop will definitely slim the laptop down. I mean, just take a look at the MacBook Air.
To all the upcoming ultraportable models: the optical drive’s epitaph clearly reads “I’m obsolete, period”.
Enough said?
T’ang
(With references from Lance Ulanoff’s article at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2309779,00.asp. Image from www.cbcnz.com.)
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