My esteemed colleague John Brownlee wrote earlier today about the excellent article at Ars Technica which explains in detail why the new 13″ MacBook Pro doesn’t have a speedy i5 or i7 chip, while its bigger brothers and sisters do.
What interests me more, though, is the discussion that follows the Ars article.
Since the article makes plain that there simply isn’t space inside the 13″ case to fit any additional graphics chips – not without reducing the size of the battery at any rate – the only feasible option was to stick with a Core 2 Duo chip, albeit one that’s slightly faster than its predecessors.
But in the comments, Gamblor says “why not get rid of the optical drive?”.
Hmm. Why not indeed? That frees up space for a dedicated graphics chip, and possibly for a larger battery too.
The Air has shown that not all notebooks need an optical drive, but has the time come to ditch them from non-Air machines too?
I’m looking at my white MacBook and thinking: when did I last use the optical drive in this thing? The answer is, quite recently, when I installed Aperture. But that was its first use in months and months. Would I be happy to ditch it in favor of speed and battery life in a future machine? You bet I would.
How about you, though? Is an optical drive still an essential part of your computing, or could you live without it?
Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He also writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. You can find out more at his website, and follow him on Twitter @gilest.
72 responses to “Would You Ditch Your MacBook’s Optical Drive For A Speed+Battery Boost?”
I can’t recall ever using it on a 2+ year old macbook. I put a CD in there the other day and it didn’t work. I was not bothered.
Now considering taking it out and working a 3g module in there somehow. I’ll probably have space for another hard drive as well.
It would be nice to have an option to put something else there anyway.Eespecially extra batteries.
You bet I would! They could also throw in some more ports on the side in it’s space. E-Sata & USB 3.0 would be nice. A second display port (thunderbolt) would be even better!
I use my 15″ pro on battery all the time and it would be nice to have double the battery or so but would i get rid of the optical drive, no. i use mine all the time for cds and dvds. if there was an extremely easy way to put a copyrighted dvd onto a flash drive or software cds onto a flash drive then i would get rid of it. also making bootable cds like linux cds, usb just makes it all more difficult so no i couldnt get rid of it without an easier way of flash drives
i barely ever used mine, so i switched to a macBook air
Apple should make it a removable option like some ThinkPads allow. Other options could be an additional 3 Cell battery or SSD. It’s the ultimate option to define the ‘Pro’ model!
Then again, software update must allow OS X discs and other bootable media to be started from USB / firewire based drives.