Do you have a DVD drive in your computer?

[Intbel]

Yup. Desktop & laptop.
I don't have a video player or a TV so the DVD is most useful.

[The Alien]

My PC has a DVD-ROM drive, but that drive became defective and doesn't work
Not that I use CDs/DVDs so much on my PC, so I don't miss it very much (the drive has been defective for 1+ year now). It used to have a CD-ROM drive, so I can always put that one back in.

My laptop, which I use most has a CD-ROM drive. Wish it had a DVD-ROM drive, but oh well :shrug:

As you can see, I do absolutely no CD/DVD-burning. I use USB pen drives for transferring data between computers. A 64 MB one has done it for me so far


Who'll win, blu ray or HD-DVD? Dunno, don't care
I'll wait and see who wins and use that format. I have no reasons to support either

[Craig1128]

I have a DVD burner in my home computer, very nice for backing up data since DVD's hold more than CD's... I've also used it for making some photo slideshows.

[sallybode]

I have a DVD player/burner. Had to upgrade because my older DVD/CD+R/-R could not read DVD-R, I bought I tutorial for my work and it was very useful to me.

I bought a spindle of disks to do my backups with, though I do have a backup drive, but nothing is perfect, better to do a backup of my backup drive, no telling that it couldn't fail as well.

Thought I'd also restore some old videos of when my kids were little. Haven't gotten a round to it yet.

[Egg Bramhill]

My youngest Granddaughter (9) sat in my car the other day, looked at the radio and said "What's that Poppy?" She meant the Compact Cassette sticking out of the front of the player! She'd never seen one in her life, and I must admit I'd never played one for several years. It's very similar to Antony's original question where he mentions floppy disc's. Floppy Disc's?

This "data storage" conundrum will only worsen in the future. Currently you store your photographs (possibly) in jpg (jpeg) format. This format uses algorithms to reduce data storage. However, with larger hard drives, broadband connections etc, do we need image compression?

So current/future formats aren't the big question, but backward compatibility.

[amoore]

I have DVD drives in my computers at home and at work, but they're only used for CDs. Mostly for software installation. Sometimes for archiving.

Tried using DVDs for backup, but I think they're a waste. I'm much happier with an external hard drive at home and the tape drive in the office.

BTW, I also have an external zip drive at home, which I still use for some interim data backups. It's just so much faster and easier than having to go through the burn process. And I can reuse the disks over and over again.

[cbutton69]

I have a DVD/CD RW combo and a DVD/CD reader on my desktop at home. I have a CD-ROM drive on my laptop at home (I'm retired so I don't have a work computer). I have the two computers networked wirelessly, so I transfer data over the network.

I teach a three-hour Computer Science course at a local collelge once a week. I carry my lesson materials (mostly PowerPoint presentations) to class on a USB flash drive.

[Unregistered]

Yes I do and they cause no end of trouble. Over the last year I have had 3 computers and not once have I been able to simply put a DVD in the drive and burn it. It's either a format mismatch or this brand of disc doesn't work in this drive or something else. My latest computer, a HP laptop that's just over a year old, has a TSST corp CD/DVDW TS-L532R drive that I cannot get to burn a disc at all. Web searches indicate others have had similar frustrations. And now we have the Blu-ray format war. I'd like to put all these people in a wash machine with a fast spin cycle and not let any of them out until the drips delivered a single working system - not that I want to stand in the way of progress!

[Unregistered]

Is it just me or is asking whether people have a DVD drive almost like asking whether people have a cdrom drive 5 years ago? I think the poll results only confirm this.