Yea, optical drives are certainly getting less popular/needed -- going the same way as the floppy. I still find them occasionally useful for those calls from friends & family to come fix their computer, and I need to burn a Hiren's or Ultimate Boot CD, and I have no clue if their old PC will support "boot from USB". It's also nice when you see a deal on Amazon for a complete TV series on BR for like $20, where even if you're torrenting, it's still worth the money (e.g. 30 BR disk of content for $20). I can rip those BRs to MP4 & store on the NAS for streaming - not sure how you'd do that w/o a drive.
$20 is probably good, cheap insurance for the infrequent need to burn a disk. A lot of comes down to your personal situation. e.g. my work laptop has a DVD burner if worse came to worse, but bypassing the DLP software isn't worth the trouble of just buying a $20 drive.
$20 is probably good, cheap insurance for the infrequent need to burn a disk. A lot of comes down to your personal situation. e.g. my work laptop has a DVD burner if worse came to worse, but bypassing the DLP software isn't worth the trouble of just buying a $20 drive.
