What good is a dvd burner?

[P T]

I've been on the build again. I'm trying to envision what a dvd burner
is good for.
Okay, I think a cd holds about 700 meg, and a dvd about 5 gig. I guess
I'm wondering what you need to burn that is larger than 0.7 gig.

Well, I suppose you could back up your hd. And you could probably
download or copy movies, but isn't that technically illegal? IF you
don't have much desire to fool around with movies, what good is a dvd
burner?

Okay, I suppose that in 12 months they will be so cheap that they
displace the cd much like the cd killed the fd, and then applications
will expand to the technology.

Curious Pete

 

[JAD]

a complete HD partition with the OS on 1 disk for a back up

cataloging MP3 collections at the higher bitrates

telling your neighbors kid you got one and he doesn't

its all about the size and the fact that its normal evolution, that it
will replace CDR

 

[John Mann]

I've been on the build again. I'm trying to envision what a dvd burner
is good for.
Okay, I think a cd holds about 700 meg, and a dvd about 5 gig. I guess
I'm wondering what you need to burn that is larger than 0.7 gig.

Well, I suppose you could back up your hd. And you could probably
download or copy movies, but isn't that technically illegal? IF you
don't have much desire to fool around with movies, what good is a dvd
burner?

Okay, I suppose that in 12 months they will be so cheap that they
displace the cd much like the cd killed the fd, and then applications
will expand to the technology.

Three words:

"****loads of mp3s"

 

[Dave C.]

I've been on the build again. I'm trying to envision what a dvd burner
is good for.
Okay, I think a cd holds about 700 meg, and a dvd about 5 gig. I guess
I'm wondering what you need to burn that is larger than 0.7 gig.

Well, I suppose you could back up your hd. And you could probably
download or copy movies, but isn't that technically illegal? IF you
don't have much desire to fool around with movies, what good is a dvd
burner?

Okay, I suppose that in 12 months they will be so cheap that they
displace the cd much like the cd killed the fd, and then applications
will expand to the technology.

Curious Pete

You nailed it . . . you could back up your HD. I typically create several
partitions. On one (C, I put OS, drivers and most applications. I also
store data there. On others, I have data backups, swap files, movie storage
(PVR), games, etc. But installing the OS, drivers and applications can
take several hours, or several DAYS if you don't have several hours to kill
in one day. Once you've got it set up correctly, it's pretty foolish not to
burn a backup copy. I use acronis true image. With normal compression
enabled, ~15GB of data (a FULL backup of drive C) will fit on ONE DVD. Now
compare that with anywhere from 5 - 7 CD-Roms.

Last time I purchased high-quality name-brand DVD+R media, I paid as little
PER DISC as I would have if I'd purchased CDR media.

If you have large files to back up or do just a few backups of your hard
drives, a DVD burner will pay for itself QUICK. DVD burners are not
significantly more expensive than CDR/W drives, and that's at today's
prices.

But the reason DVD burners are so cheap now is that new technology is right
around the corner. (blue laser, up to 200GB per disc eventually, WOW!) The
CDR/W drive is obsolete, and the DVD burner (as we know it today) will be
also, within a year. -Dave

 

[David Besack]

I've been on the build again. I'm trying to envision what a dvd burner
is good for.
Okay, I think a cd holds about 700 meg, and a dvd about 5 gig. I guess
I'm wondering what you need to burn that is larger than 0.7 gig.

Well, I suppose you could back up your hd. And you could probably
download or copy movies, but isn't that technically illegal? IF you
don't have much desire to fool around with movies, what good is a dvd
burner?

Okay, I suppose that in 12 months they will be so cheap that they
displace the cd much like the cd killed the fd, and then applications
will expand to the technology.

Curious Pete

DVD-R media is pretty cheap now. I use mine to make backups of stuff on
my HD that exceeds 700 MB. For example my music folder is about 10 GB,
so DVD-R is a much better choice for backup. I also have lots of
recorded television shows from my TV tuner card software that are around
200 MB each. It's nice to be able to put 20 on a disc rather than 3

 

[Hank]

Okay, I suppose that in 12 months they will be so cheap that they
displace the cd much like the cd killed the fd, and then applications
will expand to the technology.

Curious Pete

There already is software that comes on DVD, Encarta 2005 for one. FD is
dead? I'll use and make a floppy boot disk to boot an ailing pc or to flash
a bios or firmware over a CD any day. It will be awhile until you can call
the FD dead. In my opinion since they only cost 10 bucks or so, you'd be
crazy not to have one.

Hank

 

[Mac Cool]

P T:

I'm trying to envision what a dvd burner is good for.

If you have to think about it, you don't need one.

 

[Scott]

There already is software that comes on DVD, Encarta 2005 for one. FD is
dead? I'll use and make a floppy boot disk to boot an ailing pc or to
flash a bios or firmware over a CD any day. It will be awhile until you
can call the FD dead. In my opinion since they only cost 10 bucks or so,
you'd be crazy not to have one.

Hank

I recently upgraded my pc motherboard and decided not to bother putting the
FD back in. What's the point? I haven't used the damn thing in over three
years! All the drivers i need are either on the CD that comes with new
hardware or can be downloaded through the add new hardware wizard in
Windows. When upgrading the firmware of a component this can also be done
using a cd.

I understand that people still use a FD, but the numbers are dwindling.

Scott

 

[Toshi1873]

Three words:

"****loads of mp3s"

According to Penny Arcade, the proper measurement is
"****ton".

 

[Toshi1873]

I've been on the build again. I'm trying to envision what a dvd burner
is good for.
Okay, I think a cd holds about 700 meg, and a dvd about 5 gig. I guess
I'm wondering what you need to burn that is larger than 0.7 gig.

Well, I suppose you could back up your hd. And you could probably
download or copy movies, but isn't that technically illegal? IF you
don't have much desire to fool around with movies, what good is a dvd
burner?

Okay, I suppose that in 12 months they will be so cheap that they
displace the cd much like the cd killed the fd, and then applications
will expand to the technology.

Video. I reguarly timeshift all of my NBC shows using a
SVHS deck and then archive them off to DVD (three 1-hour
shows per disc). I've converted almost all of my old
VHS tapes to DVD.

Photo archival (on a good weekend I can shoot 200-300
pictures).

Reduced clutter... packed everything I had stored on CD
onto DVDs and cut the number of discs by a factor of 5.
(Dual-layer would've been around 11x or so.)

Legal MP3s (yes, there are such things). Archives of
CDs that I own and have ripped into a digital format (so
I don't have to re-rip them if my media drive crashes).

Probably the biggest reason?

The price difference between a DVD-ROM drive and a DVD+-
RW drive is pretty small.

 

[john doe]

You nailed it . . .
But the reason DVD burners are so cheap now is that new technology is right
around the corner. (blue laser, up to 200GB per disc eventually, WOW!) The
CDR/W drive is obsolete, and the DVD burner (as we know it today) will be
also, within a year. -Dave

That prediction "a year from now" has been going on for years, since the
advent of DVD writers, maybe even before then. Eventually that
prediction will come true, someday, but it might be called something
other than DVD by then.

Hard disc drives are extremely fast, large capacity, cheap, and they can
do much more than copy movies and store MP3s.

 

[john doe]

In any case, they are still included on store-bought PCs. Because they
are cheap? Maybe. Marketing gets to add at least one more line to the
description. More likely, maybe floppies are still the most user-friendly
removable media.

I recently upgraded my pc motherboard and decided not to bother
putting the FD back in. What's the point? I haven't used the damn
thing in over three years! All the drivers i need are either on the CD
that comes with new hardware or can be downloaded through the add new
hardware wizard in Windows. When upgrading the firmware of a component
this can also be done using a cd.
I understand that people still use a FD, but the numbers are
dwindling. Scott

I don't even have a floppy disk drive here. I have a 100MB zip drive
which is not installed. I boot from either a Windows 98 boot CD, the
Windows XP CD, or my PartitionMagic CD.

The only annoyance is like when my hard disk drive maker offers a
download which can only be extracted to a floppy disk drive. Maybe there
is a workaround for that, but it's not a problem these days.

Have a great day (or night).

 

[Toshi1873]

I don't even have a floppy disk drive here. I have a 100MB zip drive
which is not installed. I boot from either a Windows 98 boot CD, the
Windows XP CD, or my PartitionMagic CD.

The only annoyance is like when my hard disk drive maker offers a
download which can only be extracted to a floppy disk drive. Maybe there
is a workaround for that, but it's not a problem these days.

At $8 for a stylish black brand-new floppy drive, I just
go ahead and add them to the systems that I build.
About the only time I need them is for rescue diskettes
or when installing the O/S to a non-standard set of
drives (e.g. a RAID adapter).

Yeah, I wish they were dead too... but they're cheap
enough that it don't bother me much.

 

[john doe]

207.115.63.158>, (e-mail address removed) says...

At $8 for a stylish black brand-new floppy drive, I just
go ahead and add them to the systems that I build.
About the only time I need them is for rescue diskettes

I guess you don't use a CD because that would complicate your configuration
process.

Yeah, I wish they were dead too...

I haven't used a floppy disk drive in at least three years while doing
plenty of system/windows gymnastics.

I agree that floppy disk drives probably are still useful for most people.