Several years before, you may feel unfair if you buy a laptop without a CD or DVD optical drive. The optical drive is known as one of the necessary accessories, because you need a DVD or CD drive to install software programs such as Microsoft Windows and Office, you need optical drive to play music or movies on CD or DVD discs. Even playing games, the optical drive is indispensable. So that, DVD drive is on the top of the attributes list when people plan to buy a new laptop, and most of people who just buy a new laptop without optical drive will buy an external one.
However, after reviewing the laptops released recently, the optical drives turn into a neglected feature. No more than 1/4 laptops or all-in-one desktop PCs comes with the CD, DVD or blu-ray optical drives. It means that your purchasing choices decrease significantly.
If your laptop don’t have a DVD drive, or you don’t want to buy an external DVD drive for your ultrabook, following is some tips to solve your problems.
How can I install new software in the laptop?
In fact, there is nothing to worry about. Almost all the software and game programs can be downloaded online, including the well-known old brand antivirus software such as Norton and Kaspersky. It is almost impossible to get new software on a CD/DVD discs any longer. You may find the official website by google to download the programs which you are looking for.
How can I play music and watch movies or TV series?
Same as above, it is very easy for users to find the digital music or movies on the internet. As long as your internet is connecting very well, you can enjoy plentiful multi-media simply and conveniently, even no need to download. There are many online video providers, such as Netflix and YouTube.
What about data backup and storage?
It is not a problem too, because now you obtain a more convenient and faster way to save all the hard disk in laptop.
A USB flash drive is the first choice for you to store music, movies and other files. It is easy to deal with it, just plug into the port then copy or pull all the files from USB drive to your laptop’s HDD. If the capacity of the USB drive can’t meet your demand. An external Hard drive is a better choice, since it offer more storage space (Up to 3-5TB). Usually the capacity of the external hard drive is several times the mass of the internal HDD in laptop. of course, the external hard drive is more expensive than USB drive.
Alternatively, you may store your files online. The only thing to do is to find a steady and reliable cloud storage provider. The biggest advantage is that you can access your data anywhere and anytime. Meanwhile，your data is safer than saving in laptop, since a laptop might be stolen or break down, or just not by your side.
What to do if I still have plenty of old CD and DVD discs?
Do not worry, it time to move the memorable or important files from the old discs to your laptop hard disk or the cloud storage. If you are a collector owning a mass of music and movie discs, it’s a big project to transfer then to the hard disk, after all, you must achieve accurate catalogues on HDD. Take special care of it, do not throw away the optical discs till you ensure all the files are saved completely.
Any way，if you still need a optical drive for your laptop, to buy an external dvd drive is an good idea. You’d better buy a ultra-slim one, a tray-loading with eject button is more convenient. You may take it anywhere with your laptop or just store it at home. Bring it out when you want to play optical discs.
A CD/DVD player external optical drive is very cheap, it usually costs 20-30 dollars. If you don’t care about the price, I suggest you buy an external blu-ray drive, which not only has all the functions of CD and DVD drive, but also can play or write blu-ray disc.
