It's the early 2000s, and you're tired of listening to random songs on the radio while driving. The iPod was just invented, MP3 players are still in their infancy, and cars don't support auxiliary ...

Optical drives are still practical for many users, whether to play old CDs and DVDs, install software, or create ...

I haven't purchased an optical disc drive (ODD) for my PC since...actually, I don't even recall the last time I bought one. It's even been a minute since I owned a PC with a 5.25-inch drive bay to ...

Can optical drives get new life? That’s the idea behind Hitachi-LG Data Storage’s concept of hybrid optical drives. First shown at Computex last June, Hitachi-LG Data Storage was showing its hybrid ...

One of the most interesting parts of the recent Apple Mac Mini and MacBook Air refresh is that Apple is moving away from optical drives. Apple isn't the only company to do so, raising the question "Is ...

A lot of people these days are streaming movies and watching content online via the internet. Even the process of installing popular apps has changed to involve downloads rather than box-based CDs.

The FIC Condor is a great small-formfactor case, no doubt about it. Only problem is that I've killed several optical drives by installing and trying to operate them in the vertical slot that is the ...

One truism about computer hardware is that, once purchased, it immediately starts falling behind the leading edge of the technology curve. Consider the Dual-2.0GHz Power Mac G5 I purchased in ...

Sometime around 2008 and with the advent of the first MacBook Air, Apple made the declarative statement that the end was in sight for optical drives built into its notebooks. At the time, the lack of ...

The first Playstation is quickly approaching three decades since its release, and while this might make some of us who were around for that event feel a little aged, the hardware inside these machines ...

These days, optical drive bays in cases have all but gone the way of the dinosaurs. Whenever you do find one, it’s usually in an ultra-budget model—hunting for a more premium case that supports a ...

The librarian of Congress has provided a new exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that will let people repair optical drives on video game consoles. The ...