Door creaks and girl farts: computing in the real world

Some plusses:

Infra-red: Intuitive line of sight, doesn't cause interference, starts instantly, fairly easy to set up, works with all the old kit.

Optical: Resilient to drops, moisture, magnetic fields; was once ubiquitous, cheap media.

I don't see the need on a new Retina Macbook, though- its OSX is onna stick, and any video professional who pays the asking price is going to use it with external redundant storage anyway.

I consult. It is MY JOB to make things easier for clients. That means that yes, there is a USB DVD drive in my bag of kit. There's even a USB floppy drive in that bag of kit. Along with a couple USB 802.11a/b/g/n gizmos and a couple of spare card readers in case someone needs to show me something on a CF card. Instead of complaining about what modern hardware does without, I prepare to do with. Do I need that all the time? No. But when I do, I look like fasking GENIUS for having it along.

The real world?

Are we talking about computing in the working world or the retirement village? The tech world moves at a tremendous pace - you either change and adapt or drop out. I can't remember when I last saw data brought in on a CD/DVD; maybe 5-6 years ago? And only Microsoft still installs an OS or software from DVD (and that finally looks like changing too).

The past isn't dead. In fact, it isn't even past.

I love rediscovering old CDs at boot sales (am I the only one with a shameful addiction to 80s & 90s music?) and ripping them to my PC for transfer to my phone. So, even though I am as cutting edge as the next geek, I still need a CD drive, thank you very much.

Things I need a CD drive for...

Windows reinstalls : Yes you can boot from USB but my windows dics are CD/DVDs (no I don't want to use Linux)

Backups : USB is great as a quick dirty method of shifting files but I've had enough fail to show it's not reliable. At this point someone will suggest backing up to the cloud but burning my photos to CD is FAR easier.

Games : Sure there's Steam etc now but many games most come on disc (with nasty copy protection)

Actually that's it but those are REALLY important.

I have a Acer W500 windows tablet pc with no drive and it's a pain, the games I've bodged by making ISO images but that only works with the older games. Backups I can do with my main PC so that's fine but if I want to reinstall it one day I really hope it detects and boots from a USB Drive nicely.

Maybe I'm slow to change since I still have a floppy drive fitted and I really haven't needed that in years, not since the windows install stopped needing to read the controller drivers on install.... it's nice to have it there though

Backups

I bet that the user who says they've not used a CD for a year has also not made a backup for a year.

For me, CD/DVD is primarily a write-only archiving medium.

You can't please all of the people, all of the time...

... so every manufacturer worth its salt only aims to please some of the people, all of the time. This is why they distinguish between different markets.

I have no sympathy for Mr. Dabbs, whose article boils down to a very long straw-man that even manages to contradict itself.

Annoyingly, as this article and many of the posts in this forum thread prove, many of the people these manufacturers DELIBERATELY do not target PERSIST in shoving their tiresome and utterly worthless opinions in everyone else's faces, as if THEIR particularly tiny slice of a market was the only one that mattered. Got news for you: it doesn't. If you think your market really is that big, you've just told us how many gaps there are in it to fill, so get filling and earning those millions you clearly believe the likes of Apple, Dell and HP are missing out on.

Or, you could just find a manufacturer who makes the product you need, and buy that. Problem solved.

No need to go pissing and moaning around the internet about how unfair it is that you have to go out of your way to buy computer kit that can support 20-year-old overpriced obsolete shite. Yes, governments can often impose idiotic requirements, but maybe it'd be in ALL our best interests if you explained why they should update their requirements every five years or so, if only to save us taxpayers a bit of money!

Or you could just nod your head, smugly, while gouging the rest of us for millions instead. I think I can guess which direction your moral compass is pointing in given your actions so far.

And the best solutions for developing countries are education and development, not handouts of toxic second-hand tat. Try calling the likes of Foxconn in China and asking them to build you a big batch of cheap Android-based tablets with USB sockets and cheap USB keyboards. Given that they're selling cheap Android slabs to the West for well under $100 already, there's really no need to rely on the like of OLPC and their misguided ilk. The Chinese also do a good line in cheap(-ish) solar panels.

A little less tribalism and religious extremism, and a little more cooperation, would also go a long way.

Computers

What terrible nightmares of the future!

Any fule no that there is only one real supercomputer: the mighty Orac.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orac_(Blake's_7)

Blinking lights and pedantic!

Get Real

"Let me tell you about this ‘real world’ place…"

Thank you, Oh Arbiter of The Real, for your pretension and presumption, which provide a reliable indicator of where to stop reading whatever righteous, narcissistic nonsense you're ranting on any given day.

Welcome to the 21st century, where journalism is first and foremost about the writer's feelings, and emotional bias is the scarf he pins to his helm when galloping off to joust with himself. It's a marvelous thing to observe… the sublime self assurance of the almost-smart.

Everyone masturbates. Might Mr. Dabbs be persuaded to do so in private?

F'in caps lock key?

Please will somebody realise that caps lock is of little use, and for most non-perfect typists just a source of hassle when you accidentally touch it going for 'A' or similar.

If dropping anything that is "no longer needed" please get rid of caps lock!

Retire the old crap

So should Apple add a 3.5" disk drive to their MacBooks, or 5.25" disks, or a cassette tape interface, or maybe a punched card reader?

Retiring the old crap is part of progress.

Forbidden Planet

Thank you for reminding me of Forbidden Planet. Follow the link to see what Leslie Nielsen looked like when he was young (and alive): http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2261287936/tt0049223

DEFINE PROGRESS

Yes, I was shouting. According to the dictionary on my SuperDrive equipped MBP (cmd C, cmd V):"advance or development toward a better, more complete, or more modern condition". Optional optical media then for those that have to move data across air gaps, because data sticks can't be trusted and wifi would set off alarms (no, really it would). I am taking to Apple to the small claims court for my son's less than durable MBA (cracked screen, of course). The measure of progress is that it replaced his ownership of an ageing PowerBook with a screen that had taken a direct hit from a 5.56 mm cartridge case fresh out of a brand new M4. Now the Geniuses at the 'Bar' (its a long counter, not an optic in sight, sadly) recommend customers buy nice translucent hard shells to protect the effete 'object d'art' that Apple call laptops. What is the point of making it so thin, light and shiny if I must add weight and bulk to aid its survival outside of its designer shipping box? I want a well engineered laptop that runs MacOS, Linux, Unix and Windows at push. Once upon a time Apple made them - until some lotus-eating aesthete decided he/she knew better.

optical media

I dont have much complaint at loseing optical media, because AS THE AUTHOR POINTED OUT I have all kinds of high-speed access to support me, which does as good (if not better) of a job. The few times I have actually needed optical media, I can just go to the shelf and pull one of the 10 or so USB DVD-ROMs we keep there and use it.

That said, physical network is something I *DO* use oftain and when I'm out of the office at conferences (hotel wifi useually sucks). This failing makes many recent APPL machines completely worthless.

You sound like one of those who complains the iphone can't attempt to send a photo with bluetooth.

A Socket 1155 Mobo with Parallel and Serial Ports

ASUS P8P67-M PRO

They need to be brought out from IDC headers, but they're there.

Good for CNC, at least (Gecko G540)

Personally, I'm looking forward to market bifurcation that sends the consumers out of the real computer market. The low prices on hardware have been nice, but not worth hassles like having hardware "standards" become non-standard after a couple rapid release cycles and hardware product lifetimes shorter than a mayfly's.

Bring on the fondleslabs for consumers, leave computers to those that compute.