Where did the DVD Drive go?

If you’ve bought a new laptop anytime within the past ten years you may have noticed something a little peculiar. Or maybe it seemed like something was missing.

We’re often asked the question, “Why don’t new laptops come with DVD drives anymore?” And though some still do come equipped with a DVD drive, they are few and far in between. Why is that?

Years ago it made sense for a computer to come with a DVD drive. CDs and DVDs were the cheapest way to back up your data, and the only way to install new software. Ten or fifteen years ago, it made sense to purchase a stack of those discs for a few dollars, with the potential to hold upwards of four or five gigabytes of data each – it was a hot deal back then. It’s important to note that at the time, flash drives were incredibly expensive, some costing nearly fifty bucks for a measly 128 MB of storage.

Nowadays you can pick up a 64 gigabyte flash drive for a little under fifteen dollars at your nearest hardware store. Files can be downloaded straight to your device within minutes, whereas they used to take a whole day, if not several, based on the size of the file. It’s a whole lot easier, and a whole lot more convenient for companies to offer their programs online rather than on a four to eight gigabyte disk. It’s cheaper and it saves a whole lot of vital resources in the process!

Not to mention that discs tend to scratch easily – which can mean a whole lot of lost data. Speaking of data, it’s now a thousand times simpler to backup your data using programs that offer cloud storage, online services like Google Drive and Dropbox are available at your fingertips, and allow you to access your files from virtually anywhere in the world on just about any device you can think of! It’s come to the point where even flash drives are becoming less and less commonplace.

In the end, DVD and CD drives just aren’t practical in our modern day computers any more. They’re expensive to produce, but more importantly, there are cheaper, faster, and more practical options available.

Keep in mind that if you do purchase a new laptop without a DVD drive, and run into one of those rare instances that you actually need one, an external DVD Drive can be picked up rather cheaply.

If you need help backing your data up, or have any questions about your computer, give the experts at Tech Force a call!