Superdive or combo drive

i have decided that i am going to get a mac book in the near future, its just that i cant decide whether or not i want to get the super drive or combo drive. I have never burned dvds, but its probably due to the fact that i don't have a dvd burner on my current computer (a pc) and that i dont have any cool software that makes it really easy to burn dvds. On average those of you who have macbooks how many of you use your dvd burner on a regular basis?

Absolutely Never!

Ive had it for 1 year and havent used it once!!

i was kinda thinking that and i couldnt really justify spending an extra 200 for a superdrive and 40gb of space.

I use it very rarely, but when I need it I'm glad I have it. My last computer didn't have a DVD burner, and I rarely needed it, but when I did I was really mad I didn't get it when I had the chance.

It's the kind of thing that you won't miss until you really need it.

for the same reason as purple, i got a superdrive. its worth it because you'll probably need it atleast once in the computers life, and quite frankly isn't that one important time justifiable enough?

and i agree with the whole "cool software" thing. i'll burn most anything to dvd's now just because i can.

I thought the extra $200 was very much worth it. Faster (2.2GHz up from 2.0GHz, DVD-burner, 40Gb extra HDD).

For me, I do use the DVD burner sometimes -- not very often, but you'll be kicking yourself when you do and you don't have one. Consider the combo-drive: how often do you burn CD's? *DO* you even own any CD's anymore?

If you want to be able to make copies of smaller amounts of data then get the combo. Joking aside, you can snag an external or internal DVD-R, often times with more robust capacities than the stock superdrive, from some reputable places pretty cheaply (~$100) these days. Also, HDD costs keep going down and the MB HDD is user-upgradeable. When you run out of space on the stock drive you could easily clone it to a new drive with more than the 40GB of extra space Apple sells you with the additional $100.

I use my superdrive a lot, actually I rely on it.

I make backup dvds of my photo library and my LightRoom catalog files every 2-3 days. I cannot afford to lose any more photos to hard drive crashes.

I also make backups of documents, itunes library and anything I would miss if I lost it.

Funny thing is I originally bought a base model MacBook with just the combo drive, that particular macbook had so many problems I spent the first week going back to the Apple store for Genius appointments... after all that they said they would exchange the macbook for another one, and I came home with a superdrive in my new macbook and a 120GB HD instead of 80GB.

Hi,
I just ordered the 2.0Ghz Macbook with Combo drive (refurb from Apple so £100 ($200) off). I already use an external 18x DVD DL R/W (£35 ($70) including enclosure) for my iMac which I can just plug in whenever so I didn't think it was worth paying all that extra for the next model up (I bought my own 160GB HDD for £50 ($100). The Superdrives are only 8x anyway which nowadays is quite ridiculous. I'm not sure if thats the max speed slot drives can go up to or Apple are just being cheap.

I'm on my 3rd Mac, all 3 had SuperDrives, and I can only recall burning 2 DVD's, and that's only because I was out of CD-R's.

You can probably guarantee that if you get one youll never use it but if you dont youll need it sometime really important!!!

it's always nice to have. That's all I have to say. I can't believe apple is still putting combo drives in their computers in this day and age. It's seriously archaic when sub 500 dollar notebooks and desktops have dvd burners. It's a crappy way to get people to pay extra for the convenience of having a DVD burner.

I like having mine, I've had my macbook for 7 months and I've probably used it about as many times to burn DVDs. Otherwise I use it to rip my favorite movies onto my hard drive (It shouldn't be illegal as I own real copies but refuse to carry them with me everywhere I go).

reko - I agree Apple should certainly not be using Combo drives nowadays. I mean whats a DVD R/W cost to Apple? I'd be suprised if it was any more than a few quid. So for your extra £129 you get an extra 200mhz and 40Gb. I just bought a 160GB HDD and 2GB Ram from ebuyer.com for a total of £80. I know Apple products are fairly expensive but sometimes they are just taking the

Yeah, the combo drive in the base model is a bit of a joke and just a way of getting people to avoid the cheapest version IMO.

We have 2 combo models here and I've only really missed having a built-in DVD burner once at a friends house.

But I have an external DVD drive that I do use quite frequently. If I didn't have that, I would have definitely gone for the SD model.

For backups I'd recommend an external Time machine drive.

Apple has acted really pathetic with this DVD burner thing. First of all the macbook should most definitely have a DVD burner as standard. Implementing a DVD burner doesn't cost anything nowadays.

Secondly, they have (apparently) locked the new macbook air external super drive to the Macbook Air. This kind of stuff just gets me a little bit whissed off at the otherwise amazing company.

goobimama said:

they have (apparently) locked the new macbook air external super drive to the Macbook Air. This kind of stuff just gets me a little bit whissed off at the otherwise amazing company.

Click to expand...

hopefully someone hacks around that, that's a real bummer. as far as external dvd burners go, it's sexxxxxxy.

I'd guess it's more for technical reasons:
The new iMac (and I'm guessing the MBA) has "high-power" USB ports that provide more power to the ports than regular USB ports. Most USB DVD drives and harddrives either need a connection to two USB ports, or an external power supply.

This drive doesn't, so it probably requires a "high-power" USB port that most Macs don't have - hence the reason for Apple saying it's MBA only.

I guess this is all speculation cause the thing might just work with other devices. We'll have to wait till it's out...

if you do home movies and photography the dvd burner is a must in order
to share with friends and family and it gives me the option to back up
things i want to keep since a disc will outlive a hard drive.