Macbook Air. Or not so.

[John]

I'm afraid to say, it seems Apple have made a bit of a blunder with this product.

The new Macbook Air, skinnier than a stick insect and sexier than Kelly Brook... but... it has NO OPTICAL DRIVE!

Now, I can appreciate the fact that it is aimed at 'elitists' who 'already have a mac' and wish to 'wirelessly connect, wirelessly download, install, transfer, shake a sticky thumb at, do the okey kokey... and all the rest of it using their existing mac or PC, but I still can't see the logic in it. And you know the most abhorrently frustrating thing about this? They provide disks with it. Install disks, factory reset disks, driver disks, with a product that doesn't have a flippin' CD drive.

Way to go Steve!

[vegyjones]

What's an optical drive?

[John]

A standard CD drive.

[vegyjones]

Why's it called an optical drive, rather than a CD drive?

[MattR]

I don't know but it's taken John 37 minutes to find out so far

[bigcumba]

it's because the data is read by an optical device (a laser) whereas your hard and floppy disks are magnetic. Which is why it's always a good idea to 'clean' your hard drive from time to time with a powerful magnet as that sucks up any stray pieces of data that may be slowing the hard drive down.

[TheOldhamWhisper]

...Which is why it's always a good idea to 'clean' your hard drive from time to time with a powerful magnet as that sucks up any stray pieces of data that may be slowing the hard drive down.

Because this can be quite a tricky operation to carry out, it is suggested that if you are thinking of doing this to your own machine you seek professional help.

[Mavrick]

You can't upgrade the memory or even remove the battery either as it's attached to the mother board, which sounds a bit of a pain.
I wouldn't care about it not having a DVD drive as you can get a USB one for £20

[Win2Win]

I wouldn't care about it not having a DVD drive as you can get a USB one for £20

Which ruins the whole 'portable' idea!

[Mavrick]

Which ruins the whole 'portable' idea!

Not really, as you would leave the drive at home most of the time. I hardly ever use my DVD drive unless I've got a new program or need to restore the operating system.