dvd rom drives

Hand up if you remember the day you went and bought your first dvd rom drive!

Come on don't be shy there is no disgrace in admitting that you are as old as me. My stepson is 18 and was amazed when I was talking about buying pc's and installing CD drives in them then reselling them for a profit.

He asked me twice if I meant DVD drives, no I meant CD drives, "yes Cameron I really am that old".

My real question is when was the last time you actually used your DVD drive?

Moores law says something about how memory/speed of a computer doubles every 18 months (i am paraphrasing a bit).

What about all the technology that surrounds the main motherboard of your pc, it was within the last 10 years that every pc had floppy disc players in them, now if you want to use floppy discs you have to go and buy a unit separately. Only 2 years ago I had to go and buy an external floppy disc unit so I could help my mother in law out as all her family history was on floppy discs.

If you look for a cd rom drive for your pc now you will find it is as expensive or more expensive than DVD rom drives. So why would you bother putting in a cd drive when for the same price you can have the ability to play both cd and dvd's.

As less people buy cd players, less will be made and gradually they will become part of computer history just like floppy discs have.

So what comes next?

We have had floppy drives, we have had cd drives and we have had DVD drives..

Sure with the new blu ray drives we can hold something like 8 gig of info on one DVD but is that enough and is it the point.

What I mean is you still have to go to the shop and buy the DVD, bring it home then use it. If you buy from Amazon or somewhere similar you can save a step and get it delivered but you still have to wait for it to arrive.

I think that as broadband speeds get faster and faster and cloud computing brings the price of storage down we are going to see more and more people just using online software, downloading their films straight to their pc or a little box attached to the TV and we will all gradually buy less and less DVD's.

The companies save money as they don't hold any physical stock, you get instant gratification and hopefully the cost savings are passed onto the end user.