The release of a new version of Windows almost always coincides with changes in hardware technology, and the release of Windows 7 was no different. But what makes this “upgrade round” unique is that a piece of hardware that has been standard on PC’s for years has been left out of many of the new models that hit the store shelves along with Windows 7 last month.
Following the lead of netbooks, some mid to high-end notebooks are now being sold without an optical drive inside, a move which makes them thinner and lighter than ever. This type of change isn’t a first however. The proliferation of internal CD and DVD drives led to the floppy disk drive’s demise several years ago.
Now, readily available Internet downloads, fast connection speeds, and massive thumb drives have teamed up to make the internal optical drive an endangered species. At least for the time being software is still also being distributed on DVDs, but that is likely to change sooner rather than later now that high speed Internet connections are available virtually anywhere via cable, DSL or satellite. Until then, many folks will be perfectly happy to shell out a few extra bucks for an external DVD drive to use “once in a blue moon” just to install a new software package or back up the data on their hard drives.
They say “The only thing that’s constant is change”, and that axiom fits the computer industry better than any other. I believe that the computers we’ll be buying 10 years from now will barely resemble those on the shelves today. It sure is an exciting time to be a technology buff!
Always in flux>