Optical drives are still practical for many users, whether to play old CDs and DVDs, install software, or create backups—especially with modern laptops, which are usually supplied without a drive.

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 ...

Earlier this year, I found myself caught in a MacBook-induced conundrum. I had just rediscovered the late ’90s and early 2000s psychedelic progressive metal band Tool. In a music world gone totally ...

As a child in my 40's, I spend my day combining my love of music and movies with a life-long passion for gaming, from arcade classics and retro consoles to the latest high-end PC and console games. So ...

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.

You have it way easier these days, but back in the day, when you wanted to play a game on your PC, you had to take a similar ...

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, ...