Laptop DVD burner

[merk1821]

I have a general question for all of the PPCT members. Is a DVD RW drive worth the extra cost in a laptop? I am in the process of purchasing a laptop ( a nice Acer Aspire model) and AScer recently add the option of a DVD RW drive. The price would be an additional $50 above what a similar with a DVD/CD-RW drive would cost me. The trouble i have is trying to think of a use for it . The laptop will be for mobile work of my own but nothing that i could foresee needing on the DVD burner (except for massive data backups and any DVD work). But its such a small price to pay. Any ideas or hints?

merkman

[SteveHoward999]

The simple answer is ... it depends :-)

I am a professional multimedia developer. I work with a lot of large media (video and audio) files and so I need to be able to back up large files. I have a DVD burner on my PC. In 2 years I think I have used 50 DVDs.

I have used maybe 5 for personal use. I don't think I used them for anything that I could not have used a large bundle of CDs for instead .... well, that is aside from one experiment where I was ripping a couple of UK (region 2) DVDs so I could play them on my US DVD player.

If you think you are going to do loads of large backups, or of you think you are going to go into business as a DVD ripper extraordinaire then you might **need** a DVD burner. More likely you would buy one because you **want** it instead.

In a couple of years time there might be more of a need to burn DVDs ... but realistically you won't have that new laptop for much more than two years.

Oh - silly me, I almost forgot. There are several digital movie cameras on the market that burn direct to DVD (so far quality is not up to scratch, but getting there fast), but if you have your own digital video camera, or if you are planning to get one, then you will soon find you need to burn the movies to DVD or CD. You can get more video, or the same video at higher quality on DVD compared to CD. ... again, it's your choice.

For $50 I'd probably go ahead and buy it just in case I had a real future need. I won't forget that the first laptop I bought with a CD burner got me out of what could have been a deep hole with a troublesome client... I'll always spend that little extra for such a feature just in case. But my professional needs are probably significantly different from yours.

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[Sven Johannsen]

I can't think of a good reason for it, but for $50, I'd get it. Doesn't hurt, and I'll bet you a $1 that if you don't get it, you'll find a use for it relatively quickly.

[emuelle1]

Most of the time, I don't even need a CDR/W, but it's nice to have. My wife bought an Averatec laptop with a DVD RW, and she never uses it. However, for the money, I'd say go for it.

[ctmagnus]

I got one and imo it's worth it. Copying a whack of data to a 4X DVD+RW disk is very speedy. It's faster than copying the same data to a SD card in a built-in slot, in my experience, but I don't know how fast the card I've been backing up to is.

[Darius Wey]

I think it's handy to have. I frequently use my laptop's DVD+RW to back up data, burn some of my compilations, etc.; if I didn't have one, I'd be copying files to my server over the network and using its DVD+/-RW (not a fast and convenient solution, in my opinion).

Compact DVD burners are really progressing - most laptops now come with dual-layer DVD+/-RW, basically covering you on all DVD formats.

[ctmagnus]

And if yours doesn't come with a decent burner, it's possible that you can simply remove your current drive and install a newer one. Afaict, that is; I've only worked on a couple of notebooks to date.