CD Burners: The Way of the Dodo?

[Turner]

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.