I was doing some thinking today on obsolence and computers. Actually, it's something I think about every time I sit down at my computer. (Bless it's little heart (no, don't, I'm being facecious), a little 850mhz Athalon) It occured to me that it took forever and a day to get rid of the 5 1/4" floppy drives. Long after they were obsolete, and hardly any s/w shipping on them, they were still being sent out.

it occurs to me that the 3.5" floppy is dead, too. How many disks would you need on 3.5" to install Microsoft office. Or Civ3, for that matter? Yet they are still common on most systems.

Okay, I can deal with that. People still need to move data from one computer to another that are not attached to each other. I use them all the time at school, in fact it's a requirement for my classes. But then I got to thinking about CD burners. Not only are they ridiculously cheap anymore, but DVD burners aren't that much more expensive, maybe $100-$200 more. The same size, and the DVD can handle the CDRW format.

So, do you think that CD burners will disappear of the market entirely, or will they stick around for 'value' systems.

Discuss, please.

Well, I'm still waiting for the prices on DVD burners to go down soon (which shouldn't be too long since there's new technology out there already for new methods of burning). Once that occurs CD burners in general may start to fade out. However there are lawsuits against companies that sell DVD Burners - the film industry is trying to get them banned so movies cannot be burned. So we'll have to wait and see how everything turns out.

No. Definitely not. Today's media fit quite nicely into 650mb/700mb discs. Besides, DVDs are way too easy to scratch.

The floppy is still going kicking and screaming into the grave where it belongs, but it's not totally dead yet.

The CD burner's time will come, but not for a while yet.

There is still a niche for them. Here are two reasons: 1) the burners themselves are much cheaper than DVD burners, as are the media; 2) many people who aren't interested in watching DVDs will want to continue to burn CDs for their personal music collections, long after DVD burners have surpassed CD burner sales.

Originally posted by Jeratain
However there are lawsuits against companies that sell DVD Burners - the film industry is trying to get them banned so movies cannot be burned. So we'll have to wait and see how everything turns out.

Which is odd because most movies could fit on a CD. :confused:

There still needs to be a replacement for the floppy, IMO. The CD doesn't do it for me - it takes longer to burn a document onto a CD then to store something on a floppy. Zip drives, which can hold 250 MB at a little bit larger size seem ready to replace it, but they aren't catching on.

One last thing - do CD players play a DVD with music files on it? I don't think so, in which case, CD burners will still exist to serve that purpose...

Originally posted by cgannon64
One last thing - do CD players play a DVD with music files on it? I don't think so, in which case, CD burners will still exist to serve that purpose...

Im wondering the same thing, but id think not.

Originally posted by cgannon64
One last thing - do CD players play a DVD with music files on it? I don't think so, in which case, CD burners will still exist to serve that purpose...

The density of DVDs is way higher than that of CDs, so no. And think about it, if a CD player can read data from a DVD, then shouldn't it be called a DVD-player?

Originally posted by nihilistic


The density of DVDs is way higher than that of CDs, so no. And think about it, if a CD player can read data from a DVD, then shouldn't it be called a DVD-player?

:lol: Good point.

Originally posted by nihilistic
No. Definitely not. Today's media fit quite nicely into 650mb/700mb discs. Besides, DVDs are way too easy to scratch.

This the balance point - a medium isn't obsolete while there are still new releases on it. How many PC games have YOU seen on DVD?

When DVD players are a standard item on the VAST majority of CDs this might change - but as all the CD does is carry information for the install (and it can be compressed) there really ISN'T a need for games on DVD for quite a while yet.

So I think it will be around for quite a while.

They'll fade out in a couple of years, I think. I want one of them neat USB storage devices :goodjob: ;)

Originally posted by nixon
They'll fade out in a couple of years, I think. I want one of them neat USB storage devices :goodjob: ;)

Another important factor is how long the blanks are available for - if production stops tomorrow it will get obsolete even sooner.

My cd writer is only a year old, so i hope not. The number of people who have cd writers will mean a reluctance to upgrade probably. It still has a decent storage capacity and are better than zip discs(though maybe not as tough). Long live the cd writer!:D

The ability to rewrite is exspecially useful.

I was out looking for a computer a few months ago, and I found that almost all the new computers being sold come with burners already installed. I think that burners will become an actual part of the computer, not just an accessory to add on.

See, that was my hope when XP came out, with native burner support. Plus the way that XP handles the CD-R/CD-RW is just awesome. Not having to close out the disc, drag and drop. . . it was nice. I was taking files from home to work on CD-RW, and without closing the disc out, Win98 read the disc just fine. Don't understand the mechanics of it, but it was cool.

Now I see most computers ship with CD-RW. Some you have to pay a bit more for, but it's not much. On the other hand, DVD burners are cheap now. I can get a DVD burner for less now than I paid for my VCR five years ago. . . .and it wasn't the most expesnive VCR out there. . . So while CD-R/CD-RW is becoming the standard, I just don't know how long they'll be the standard for.

It just occured to me that there's not much difference between a CD burner and a DVD burner. Much simular to fifteen years ago, when you had the 320k 5 1/4" disk drives, and the 1.2mb 5 1/4" drives. . . the lower density ones disappeared within a couple years. . . so maybe it'll be the same for the CD burner. Maybe not. . . .

Compared to a disk or zip drive they're highly inpracticable, seeing all the trouble you need to do to re-write a CD-RW; not to mention the single use or a normal CD-R. So I reckon there will come a substitute some day.

I've always wondered why the zip drives didn't become a standard. Are they too expensive?

I always wondered that also, Matrix. Perhaps someone can enlighten us?

to expensive :D the only hold 120mb or the newer ones 200mb and cost about as much as a cd writer or more

Originally posted by Matrix
Compared to a disk or zip drive they're highly inpracticable, seeing all the trouble you need to do to re-write a CD-RW; not to mention the single use or a normal CD-R. So I reckon there will come a substitute some day.

I've always wondered why the zip drives didn't become a standard. Are they too expensive?

They just might. Now that the capacity is up to 750mb, at about the same price as 250mb disk (or it will be shortly) they might make headway into the market. 750 mb on a 3.5" disk. That data is more compressed than a cd. Still not up to DVD standards.

But you say how hard it is to rewrite a CD-RW. I've never really done it, but WinXP makes it really easy to write to CD. Even a CD-R that still has space on it. So they might stick around too, depending on what happens with DVD-/+RW.

That, and the ZIP format is more durable than a CD/DVD, not as many scratches on the disk. This will be a big hurdle for the optical media to get around. . .of course, if people will just take care of their stuff. ;):D