For some time now we have seen how laptops have stopped coming standard with optical drives, that is, DVD or Blu Ray players. The natural thing is to think that this is because the distribution of software has made the leap to distribution through the Internet. However, there are a number of technical reasons that have led to such a decision and have made portable DVD drives a thing of the past. We explain what they are.
In the 90s a word was repeated a lot, multimedia, and it all came from the fact that the appearance of the CD-ROM and its 650 MB of capacity had been an incredible leap compared to having floppy disks of just over 1 MB. Suddenly, the data to be processed stopped having little precision due to lack of space. The quasi-robotic music became real music, we began to be able to manipulate photographs, etc. Video games took a qualitative leap in the technical aspect and with it came an era of new hardware to take advantage of the capabilities of the CD first and the DVD later. However, today new computers are no longer sold and we do not see laptops with a DVD drive as standard.
What has caused the end of DVD in laptops?
Every optical disk is based on the same principles that any disk drive works with, with the difference that the head is not a needle or any physical element, but a laser of greater or lesser precision. Which allows to create discs with a greater number of irregularities on its surface, the smaller these are, then the more information they can hold. However, this is a paradox, since the more storage capacity an optical disk has, the longer it takes to access the information.
The successor of the DVD was the Blu Ray and the jump was not made because a hard disk is necessary so that the speed of random access to the data is not a problem. It is a medium that at a sequential level and playing or recording a movie is ideal. However, its capacity of several tens of GB is not necessary for media such as music, and the random access speed is disastrous for a computer system . Therefore, the creators of software programs, taking advantage of the higher network speeds, did not hesitate to make the leap to distribute and sell their programs over the Internet.
Thus, the DVD in laptops and desktops remained an atavistic piece, as were the PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard for years. However, we have seen them disappear definitively in recent years, in a completely natural process. Their usefulness has been decreasing over time, since there is no software that is distributed in this format and its inclusion in a laptop means having to increase its thickness . In an era where having an ultra-slim laptop in your catalog is of vital importance, it is normal that said piece disappears.
What do I do with my DVD reader today?
Well, surely you have not used it for a long time, unless you use it to watch movies, although in that case we think that you should already have them on a well-classified hard drive. In any case, we recommend replacing your DVD drive with a SATA SSD, which is more useful today and if you don’t know how to do it, just follow the link.