CD-ROM

[SteveCRM]

Remember those CD-Roms that sucked in the CD? The ones they use in cars? Why don't they use them on computers anymore? My friend had one two or three years ago and I haven't seen one since.

[marnitzg]

They're called front-loaders. You still get them.

[HarryW]

In fact, the CD/DVD drives in both computers in this room use them. I've usually seen them advertised as slot-loading (as opposed to tray-loading).

[overhill]

I used to have one like that, but I do believe that they are phasing them out. Like other technologies, the original seems to be better.

One reason, I believe, is that many new devices such as Sony digital cameras are utilizing CD's that are smaller. These smaller CD's probably do not feed in correctly on a front-loader. Also, companies are starting to ship CD's that are not round. Some are the size of business cards and others are custom shapes that need a tray to sit in.

This may sound dumb, but I have personally seen drives after people tried to jam more than one CD in them. I think that companies have found it easier to stick with the tray.

[HarryW]

That's true actually, I had a business-card style CD which needed to be put into the little mini-CD part of a tray loading CD drive to work, and I was grateful I had my CD-RW drive to read it with, since that's tray-loading. I'm not sure if it would have worked in the slot-loading drive, but I wasn't going to find out the hard way

[parksie]

I have sitting next to me a CD shaped like a four-leaf clover...some advert for backup software.

Made a terrible noise in my 44x tray...put THAT into a slot and bye-bye PC as it razors its way through.

[SteveCRM]

I had something like that, the noise is terrible