I Forgot My Mantra is Scott Jackson's webtumblespacelog.

Disc Drives in Laptops

Here is the list of things I’ve done with the disc drive in my laptop:

• Install Snow Leopard

I’ve been carrying this big, heavy SuperDrive in my laptop around for a year. For that one thing.

Screw that.

You shouldn’t have to always carry a component around if you’re barely ever going to use it. The things that disc drives are typically used for (installing applications from discs, watching DVDs) are not the kind of things that you do when you’re mobile.

There are so many better uses for that space — you could keep your laptop much lighter by not having anything in there, or put in an OptiBay or something and have a mirrored backup drive in there, or an SSD drive for your OS’s installation, or a huge HDD drive for storing things like your picture or video library.

Sure, you’d still need occasionally need a disc drive (installing applications, watching movies, things like that). For that, have a USB disc drive at home or use the disc drive in another computer on your network along with Remote Disc to wirelessly install things from discs¹. How often are you both out of the house AND needing to install something from a disc? Exactly.

Again:

You shouldn’t have to always carry a component around if you’re barely ever going to use it.

The sooner laptop manufacturers realise this, the better. The MacBook Air may have been less than the runaway success that Apple was hoping for (I mean, who wouldn’t want a $2000AUD netbook?), but if it has shown us one thing, it’s that people don’t really need a disc drive in a portable computer.

¹: It’s not perfect now, but give it a few years and Remote Disc will be a fully-operational disc drive for your laptop that just happens to be attached to a different computer.