WOF: How often do you use your computer's optical drive?

I use it all the time when needing to send large photoshoots to customers with picture files being 24mb a piece and 400mb Tiffs most. It is still the cheapest process for this and my client base and models. Other than that I don't use it at all.
 
Almost every time I play a game =P

So about once or twice a day depending on what game or games I play, I have and will always prefer to buy games, films and music on disc. Even if I wanted to buy digital stuff I couldn't do it for everything because the connection I use is crap.
 
Up until about 5 years ago, I used it almost every day. Now, it only gets used once every 2 or 3 months....

That's what she said...
 
I actually used my optical drive not too long ago to upgrade my XP system to Windows 7 64-bit. I downloaded the installation files from digital river, but since I wasn't able to launch the 64-bit installer from within XP 32-bit, I had to create an ISO out of the installer files and burn it to DVD.

I also use my optical drive to play an old game every once in a while or a DVD movie. So yeah, I think I'm still using mine.
 
I use the optical drive approximately two to three times in the lifetime of the system: For installing OS and drivers when I build it, and whenever I need to (re)install software that is only available on CD/DVD.

From my point of view the optical drive is only slightly more useful than the floppy. I have stopped installing an optical drive for my builds; instead I have a portable USB drive I can fall back on for the once-in-a-year occasion where I actually need one.
 
I use it for a few old games I play every so often and one new game. I used it 2 weeks ago for street fighter 4. Before that idk how long its been. 6 months+. I bought a dvd burner\drive for like 20$ since they are so cheap.
 
I rarely use my optical drive in my laptop. I think it would make more sense to drop optical drives from laptops altogether but still sell external optical drives for the rare occasion that you do need it (ripping audio cd to hdd, etc). With the ability to boot from usb flash drives and the like I don't find a need for optical drives anymore. I believe blu-ray will be the last portable disk as there are just better ways of transporting and storing data.
 
When making movies for friends and family. It's much easier to give them and let them keep a DVD/CD than a USB.
Lots of people still use their CD players in their cars.

I use my optical drive an average 2-5 times a month.
Installing Windows, giving away movies, pictures, music and software.

I think they should have more laptops that sell with an external USB Optical drive as an option in favour of better cooling or more USB ports.
 
I just looked and I have my windows install disk in their from my reinstall in October. I use steam for every game I have now. Although, I plan on buying a hard copy of Crysis 2 though and want to activate it on steam.
 
I use mine maybe once or twice a week. I've used Lite-On ODDs for my most recent builds. I use it to start up my games, watch an occasional movie on DVD and listen to my audio CDs ( one of the reasons why I insist on including a discrete sound card in all my PC builds ).
 
I haven't used mine in months (6 or 7 months at that), infact I've sort of 'sealed' it to protect it from dust; and all reinstallations / installations has been done mostly using USBs, and to top it all for last few weeks I've been trying to 'motivate' myself to make a backup dvd of data.
 
I would get rid of my drive on my laptop immediately. As for a desktop i would like to have somethin of blue ray in there for a while.
 
The last time I installed either windows or Ubuntu it was from a flash drive. My vehicle's audio system supports thumb drives.

I last used my optical drive to burn a cd for a friend about 5 weeks ago.
 
I have to admit I'm guilty of not using Discs anymore. I either transfer everything from an external 2.5" HDD or USB. It's just more convenient and not permanent.
 
Actually what I like about optical discs is the permanency (and I don't like that they actually get corrupted with time, but I still trust them more than hard disks for some reason).

This thread gave me quite a bit of food for thought. I was thinking about buying a blu-ray burner for backup purposes, and I had to consider how I'm really going to use it. I still think I'll get it, because I can see several uses for it, but I have to wonder how much I'll really use it.

For a laptop, well I never had a laptop with an optical drive and my next one, the Thinkpad X120e, isn't going to have one either.
 
I find myself using discs probably on a weekly basis, mainly for media entertainment like ripping. Software wise once it's on my system I'm done, I may create a few ISO's here and there but not to often and rarely for backup purposes. Gaming wise well everything nowadays should be disc-check less or in digital form, so once it's installed I put it away in a safe place :) .
 
I've probably used the optical drive on my computer about 2.5 times since I bought it which was one and a half years ago. The half of a time in case your wondering was when I was going to use it but then couldn't find the CD i was looking for. Thought I should add that in because I actual had a use for it. When I go to build my next system I think I will include one even though I probably wont use it. They are so cheep now that its worth 20 bucks to have one in case I need it.
 
I still use mine several times a day. Same with our Media and Office Admin departments. Optical drives still form a major part of our day to day data use.
 
I use mine fairly often - several years ago I started building a library of movies and audiobooks off Usenet. DVD-R blanks are cheap, nonvolatile and nonmagnetic. They may not last forever but nothing does. They'll last longer than I will. I have a pretty good library now, and I don't really trust flash drives. Plus, they're slow and hard to label. When USB 3 actually becomes available I may switch to external USB drives, depending on storage costs per gig. Or maybe not until another nonmagnetic, nonvolatile, price-competitive storage medium comes along.
 
I use my optical drives for ripping music and DVD's as im a DJ and i like to have all the physical copies of my games since my internet isn't that fast and sometimes spotty. Also when i beat a game the case is like a trophy for me.
 
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