Why do we still have CD and DVD drives?

[davester]

Since SD and USB cards/drives are dirt cheap and capacities have risen far above that of a DVD, why do we still have bulky CD/DVD drives and delicate CDs/DVDs still? Is there some technical reason or is this just inertia, akin to the longevity of floppy disks. I suppose you could argue that the media itself is ultra cheap, but usually the content is fairly pricey, essentially negating the cost advantage, and most DVDs/CDs are write-once devices, a PITA if you ask me. Given the scarcity of real estate in today's laptops, why haven't these gone the way of the dodo yet?

[AlphaDog]

One reason is because some of us simply aren't inclined toward buying new hardware if what we have still works. Good enough reason for ya? As far as I'm concerned that includes both the computer and the drive. I also will be extremely annoyed if I live long enough to find that I'm going to have to choose between gerrymandering some kind of external device so I can read CDs and/or DVDs containing stuff I've stored or spending hours moving all of that stuff to a different kind of media. Some of us don't have a lot of time and energy to waste, so leave my CD/DVD drive alone.

[Mac1337]

In not a too distant future we'll hear oh, and one more thing...

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Because AT&T does not offer a 50 MB/s WiMax connection for $20 per month... yet.

[kj]

I think it's just as simple as that there are still a lot of cd s and dvd s around. I had someone give me 4 cds to listen to a couple days ago. kj.

[M>B>]

Most operating systems and major programs are distributed on disks!

Not to mention that I have a huge library of audio CD's.

They have not gone the way of the Zip & Jazz, yet!

[Marc Anthony]

I don't know of any other physical media that can compare in terms of price to storage ratio or is as ubiquitous. If we are discussing burnable CDs, they can be rewritten hundreds of times if you purchase rewritable media. For people who purchase movies on disc, it also gives you a collectible, unlike a digital download which is ephemeral and somewhat lacking as a keepsake.

[sekker]

I'm with davester, even considering replacing my optical drive in my mbp with a second hard drive or ssd.

I almost never use my optical except when running maintenance. Would much rather have more speed or storage.

I'll keep my external drives for some time to come, however! Too many install discs.

[$tevie]

I play CDs and DVDs using the CD and DVD drive.

[Doc]

davester wrote:
Since SD and USB cards/drives are dirt cheap and capacities have risen far above that of a DVD, why do we still have bulky CD/DVD drives and delicate CDs/DVDs still? Is there some technical reason or is this just inertia, akin to the longevity of floppy disks.

...Given the scarcity of real estate in today's laptops, why haven't these gone the way of the dodo yet?

Optical discs are cheap, familiar and the reliability of optical media is well-known; flash media is much more expensive than optical media when used for similar purposes; it's not clear that the longevity of consumer-grade flash media approaches that of the typical writable CD or DVD; a lot of flash media is slower than optical media; and the ever growing variety of flash media precludes the dominance of any particular standard for long enough to make it worthwhile standardizing on it.

At the rate that new storage devices are emerging, I wouldn't want to bet my fortune on, for example, SDHC cards as a universal standard because there will certainly be something out next year that kicks SDHC's butt and requires new hardware.