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!

When people think about hacker groups, there is no group more notorious than “Anonymous.”
Believe it or not, “Anonymous” is not some “secret organization”, as the media would have us think. With all the information, and sometimes misinformation out there about this group of “cyberterrorists” there are only a few facts.

1. Anonymous is not really an organized group.
It’s easy enough to join Anonymous, as it is really more of a movement than an actual organization. All you have to do is proclaim yourself a “member”. This is the main reason the icon is a suited man with a question mark for a head, or a man in a mask. There is no designated leader, no structured ranks, no systematic order, and no secretly scheduled assignments. People within Anonymous come to the forefront when they demonstrate their hacking abilities or spearhead internet causes or rally people together online; doing it in the name of Anonymous.
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2. Anonymous began with a joke.

It began on the website “4chan” in 2008, an online community of people in different groups determined by their interests and such, a site not unlike today’s mainstream internet site Reddit. It was in this year that Anonymous became a political hacking group, when it began to flood The Church of Scientology with prank calls and faxes, even going as far as to take down their website.

3. There has been a lot of inner turmoil.

Anonymous faced a bit of a civil war in its earlier years that resulted in some of the most notable hackers within the group branching off into different groups like “Lulzsec.” After the Scientology debacle, many within were divided between whether or not they wanted the movement to continue as a politically charged hacktivist group or just a bunch of trolling pranksters.

4. The Irony

It’s a little difficult to operate a group of hacktivists all pursuing one common cause while maintaining complete anonymity without people labeling particular cyberattacks or data dumps as “Anonymous led.” This is the problem Anonymous has been facing for quite some time now, and it only really adds to the occasionally laughable public profile.

5. Anonymous beliefs

When people hear about Anonymous nowadays, many roll their eyes or scoff or simply pay no mind at all. Once upon a time, it did have a set belief system. It was for the betterment of society, not just toppling websites for the fun of it but also exposing people, holding protests against the “1%” and, threatening terrorists groups.

6. The Mask

Originally seen in Warner Brothers 2005 film “V for Vendetta,” the mask has become absolutely iconic within the hacktivist group and is used to designate specific members. Funnily enough, the movie itself is very pro-copyright in some respects, which would probably offend the entire Anonymous movement, but it has somehow remained over all of these years as the “face” of Anonymous.

7. Anonymous is broken.

Conflicting beliefs, motivations and skills have caused Anonymous to crumble beneath itself and fade from the public eye. With some of its most skilled hackers like “Sabu” from Lulzsec retiring or being arrested, it has become a mockery of what it used to be. Falsely identifying two possible officers who shot Michael Brown, wrongly shutting down twenty thousand Twitter accounts of people whom those involved claimed to be a part of ISIS (but were not,) and just generally mucking it up as of late certainly hasn’t helped its reputation.

This group of internet “hacktivists” has made a profound impact on what we know about hacking and internet causes today.  It has opened our eyes to things in the world that are going sideways, the movement also wreaked havoc on governments and corporations.
It is interesting to note, that while the general public thinks of them as a “serious problem”, the “members” of Anonymous don’t take themselves seriously at all.

​If you need help protecting your computer from some of the internet’s nefarious denizens, contact Tech Force today!