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A comment on Imagine the Apple Thunderbolt Display… without the display. Parent comment

Re:Imagine the Apple Thunderbolt Display… without the display by ugh on Monday July 25, 2011 @12:53PM (#2803414)
Can’t you just buy some cheapo external USB drive† and stow it away for disc-related emergencies? For me just knowing that drives like that exist is enough, I know I can order them from Amazon and have them the next day. (Nowadays I only really use my optical drive to rip music I can’t get any other way. That happens maybe once a year or so.)

If you like watching DVDs while you are mobile I would definitely not recommend getting a PC without optical drive anytime soon – for obvious reasons. If you don’t, I really see no reason not to ditch the optical drive. All other use cases seem to be handled well enough by emergency external drives.

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† Like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-External-Optical-SE-S084D-TSBS...

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Re:Imagine the Apple Thunderbolt Display… without the display by michaelbuckbee on Monday July 25, 2011 @01:18PM (#2803542)
Even if you like watching DVDs on your laptop you'd likely still be better off with a removable optical drive. Rip the discs to the hard drive and run them from there.
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Re:Imagine the Apple Thunderbolt Display… without the display by pornel on Monday July 25, 2011 @03:04PM (#2804061)
Highly recommended. I use this method exclusively, even though I have working DVD drive: scratched discs don't cause nasty surprises during the movie, and the drive doesn't make noise during playback.

With RipIt.app set to auto-rip every inserted DVD and eject it it's no hassle.

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Re:Imagine the Apple Thunderbolt Display… without the display by chc on Monday July 25, 2011 @12:58PM (#2803433)
After the optical drive on my MBP broke, I came to the same conclusion. I never bothered to get it fixed, and since I have a spare external drive, it was never a problem.
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