I'm sick and tired of loudy, whiny optical drives! I need something quieter than the Sony 16x (rebadge Lite-On, I believe) that I have in my system now. On short bursts, it whines terribly.<BR><BR>I ...

Windows only: Freeware application Nero DriveSpeed slows down the read speed of your CD or DVD drive so you don't have to endure the loud jet-engine whirring of your drive every time you want to ...

Most modern laptops lack an optical drive, yet CDs and DVDs are still used in many households, whether for playing old movies, installing older software, or even for making physical backups. An ...

Do combo movie-watching and music-recording drives have the write stuff? Apparently PC manufacturers think so. After a slow start, combination CD-rewritable and DVD drives are showing up in computers ...

Most optical drives today are combo CD/DVD drives that support DVDs and all the CD formats: CD audio, CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW. The speeds of the drives are rated by their CD-ROM and DVD transfer rates.

Apple was one of the first manufacturers to exclude DVD players from its laptops, and the same quickly became true for iMacs as well. This meant that if you wanted to rip CDs for your iTunes library, ...

Those not exactly thrilled with the noise levels produced by the Xbox 360 + HD DVD drive combo will likely adore Asus' latest, as it gives HTPC builders an uber-quiet alternative to playing back HD ...

Optical drives no longer come pre-installed in most PCs and laptops, yet they’re still indispensable for many users. Whether for playing old DVDs, installing ancient software from CDs, or burning data ...

When Apple announced new Macs last week, one thing that was notably absent from the new models presented was an optical drive. While Apple has been phasing out CD/DVD drives since the introduction of ...