Yeup, actually use it pretty heavily, and have been looking into buying a few spares... Here's my take on it, just like records, optical will make a serious comeback at some point. We still process tons of cd's at Amazon, and to top it off, my mother loves her karaoke, and you kinda need a burner if you want your own karaoke discs. So yeah... Optical has to stay for me.
With file sizes so large I highly doubt it'll ever come back considering how cheap flash is and I ran karaoke without discs 6 years ago all through virtual DJ.
I taught a 60 something year old lady yesterday how to log into a Firepass and change her password and I taught my GF's 80 year old mother how to use Google. It's not that really hard as long as they are willing.
You're talking to somebody who has an active 98 box and I even stream with it sometimes so yea. I don't mind old tech, I just don't see the need for internal optical drives in a modern machine. I finally broke down and purchased my first BD drive but it's external and going to sit on my server for rips.
Been thinking about buying an external bluray drive for some time now, mostly so I can make archival backups of a few things. Still, even with out the drive, the front of this thing would be a bit fugly since the filler plate is flat black.
I have tried to teach my mother things numerous times, shes at that stage in life where she can't grasp and hold onto short term memories very well, but can talk about things 50 years ago.