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.