It's almost 2026, and Fujitsu is doing its best to save optical disks - the A77-K3 is a 16-inch 13th-gen Core i5 laptop with a DVD drive

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globaldu@reddit

It's almost 2026 and Fujitsu is manufacturing laptops with only 256gb storage:

Internally, the A77-K3 uses 16GB of DDR5 memory and a 256GB solid-state drive, paired with an Intel Core i5-1335U processor.

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paeschli@reddit

Wait until you find out how many GB of storage a Macbook Air comes with

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DeliciousIncident@reddit

If you go to the laptop's page, it says that the storage is configurable between 2TB, 1TB, 512GB and 256GB. Same with RAM: 64GB, 32GB, 16GB, 8GB.

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1mVeryH4ppy@reddit

Read the news about DVD/BD drive sales soaring in Japan as people prefer to install Win11 from disks. Crazy stuff in 2025.

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MrLancaster@reddit

Physical media seems to be making a comeback. And I can attest that a 4k Blu-ray is a massive quality jump from a 4k stream.

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gumol@reddit

Physical media seems to be making a comeback.

is there sales data to back it up?

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paeschli@reddit

Anecdotally, I would say no. LG has stopped making Blu-Ray players, Pioneer has stopped making Blu-Ray drives and Sony has stopped making BD-R blanks.

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1080p blu-ray is better quality than 4k stream. 4k streams tend to be completely crap due to insane compression streaming services have. Just remember that youtube offers better quality video than paid services like netflix or HBO.

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Important-Permit-935@reddit

tbf HBO and Netflix might have poor quality, but they produce phenomenal exclusives and YouTube is still not profitable.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Youtube has been profitable since 2021 according to youtube CEO. Of course we dont have access to internal numbers.

HBO used to produce phenomenal exclusives, not so much anymore. Netflix is hellbent on killing any good exclusive they have.

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Important-Permit-935@reddit

Til for youtube, but netflix still makes good exclusives, I recently watched Dept. Q. The point is that, other than hosting and shoving scam ads at its users, YouTube doesn't really do anything.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Youtube has plenty of good content not available anywhere else as well. Its just that such content isnt youtube funded. Anyway, the point of the discussion was that none of the streams (not even youtube) come close to quality of image that an old Blu-ray does.

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Jeep-Eep@reddit

I'm just saying, expect 5.25 and laptop optical bays to make a comeback in higher model cases soon...

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BlueGoliath@reddit

Don't get people's hopes up. This trend of minimalist fish tank PC cases is obnoxious. Bring back workstation PC cases.

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Jeep-Eep@reddit

Funniest possible outcome: Fishtank case with an optical bay.

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tsparks1307@reddit

It would be pretty trivial to stick a couple 5.25 optic bays in the "basement" of a case. A lot of modern cases already have bays for HDDs/SSDs down there.

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fmjintervention@reddit

Fractal Design has already done this with the Pop cases, released 2022. This isn't a fishtank style case, but the idea of putting some 5.25" drive bays in the front of the case basement has already been done. No reason why a manufacturer couldn't do this to a fishtank style case.

Pic

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IANVS@reddit

In most fishtank cases bottom fans are almost useless, they drop 1-2 degrees of heat for the extra cost of 3 fans and added noise. That space on the bottom can be used for mounting drives and stuff...

Fishtanks/dual chamber cases are dumb in general. Can you have great airflow and temps with a standard case? Yes, you can and with half the fans used. Can you have RGB? Yes, you can. Can you fit big GPUs and radiators? Yes, you can.

But surely you get extra storage space now that you get a separate chamber in your fishtank? Lol nope, still 2 if you're lucky. And you have to mind all that glass. And they push you into keeping them on your desk eating precious space, because they're designed to be filmed in YouTube showcases, not to be practical (and because they put the fucking I/O on the bottom). And don't even get me started on "minimalistic" I/O...I paid for all those ports, I can use them, give them back to me.

And now Corsair made a triple chamber case...FFS, just stop already...

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fmjintervention@reddit

If you want heaps of expansion, lots of ports and massive airflow, I think fishtank cases just aren't for you. There's nothing wrong with prioritising aesthetics, especially when most gaming PC builds are so simple in terms of demands. I flip gaming PCs as a side hustle and most gaming PCs nowadays don't use any drive bays at all, they just have a single M.2 drive. Most gamers don't need heaps of IO or internal expansion, motherboards have good enough sound/networking/storage support that the only expansion card in the computer is the video card. For most people, all the front IO they need is a power button, headphone jack, two USB type A ports, and a USB type C is nice but not strictly necessary. For these builds, fishtank cases look great and are perfectly functional.

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IANVS@reddit

The thing is, gamers are just a subsection of overall PC userbase but, for some reason, they tend to overblow their importance. I don't mean to belittle people playing games, I can be called a gamer myself. But you can be a gamer while doing other stuff too and hardware can be designed to beneftit both gaming and other tasks. There is no reason I can't have another two USB 2.0 ports or a Reset button on a fishtank, for example. We used to have those, you know. That's the problem here with PC cases (and not just cases) - gaming got prioritized at the detriment of everything else.

Worse yet, it's not even actual gaming and gamers, it's the perception of it. You know, the image that marketing departments and media serves you when someone mentions gaming. You gotta have lights everywhere, you gotta have the biggest and strongest GPU, you gotta have an OLED monitor, you gotta have a fishtank filled to the brim with ARGB fans, you gotta have an HE mechanical keyboard, etc. or otherwise how are you a gamer?! You don't need any of that shit to enjoy games. It's such a bullshit, profiling and a ploy to sell crap to people. And that is how we got into mess we're discussing here. We got an artificial divide to gaming vs. other where there's no need to have one, you can have it both.

I don't mind, give fishtanks to people that want them. But at the same time give people like me other options that arent low tier or super niche. Offer a solid side panel along a glass or mesh one as regular offer. Don't take useful stuff out, everyone can benefit from more USB ports, the mobo has headers, might as well use them (and gamers do tend to use them for a lot of stuff). Anyone can benefit from a Reset button, gamer or not. If a case has room for it, put an extra HDD mount in there, you never know who might use it. Put a fucking filter on the mesh intake, you only get a degree or two in heat as opposed to not having a dust trap. There's really no reason to not have it all in a "gaming" case but people have to ask for it, not defend being shafted by manufacturers...

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Jeep-Eep@reddit

And funnily enough, I could see the fishtank types being the sort to shell out for 4k Bluray support...

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fmjintervention@reddit

The absolute majority of PC builders are building their PC primarily to play games on, so yes manufacturers prioritise gamers. It's their biggest sales demographic, by a long shot. Gamers don't care about having a million USB ports, or heaps of PCIE expansion slots, or loads of SATA ports. Most gaming PCs nowadays have one expansion card (the video card), one or two SSDs, no HDDs, no optical drive, and maybe 3-4 USB devices plugged in. That's a keyboard and mouse, maybe a headset, maybe a controller or other input device like a steering wheel. Given how many laptop gamers there are out there, it's fair to say a substantial proportion of gamers (PC building's largest demographic) could get by with 3 USB ports, maybe even 2. If anything I think you're overstating your importance, as loads of connectivity and expansion just isn't a priority for most people.

You don't need any of the stuff you mentioned to play games, but they're nice to have. You can play current gen games on a $300 Xbox Series S if you want and there's nothing wrong with that, but there's a lot of people out there who buy the nice monitors, high end graphics cards, and nice keyboards because they want a better experience and there's nothing wrong with that either.

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Jeep-Eep@reddit

yeah, and even if you're not into optical drives, it's a great high utility slot for everything from HDDs to the current LCD fad; seems a missed chance not to use that for that...

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Jeep-Eep@reddit

Thermaltake could aftermarket it onto a number of their chassises.

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Click_This@reddit

My Ncase M1 is exactly that!

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BlueGoliath@reddit

It would double as a hole to pour fish food into.

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ky56@reddit

You mean like this one.

https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/server-nas/cs383/

It's more for a NAS but to me has many elements of a good Workstation case, depending on what usecase you center it around.

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IANVS@reddit

Amen. The old Fractal's monoliths like the Defjne R5 and R6 are some of the best. I wish they didn't abandon that design in favor of chading trends...

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Snibberwhirl@reddit

Planning on purchasing one the Fract POP XL Silents for this explicit reason, a solid BD read/write drive is a godsend.

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Nicholas-Steel@reddit

Am kinda annoyed that various cases that do support such a drive now tend to position it at the bottom so you gotta really bend over to use the optical drive and it's much more susceptible to dust clogging it up.

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Whirblewind@reddit

As per Corsair's data, most people have their rig on a desk these days, so no bending over necessary.

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Jeep-Eep@reddit

Funniest possible outcome is Fractal brings out a Torrent II that fixes the lack of bays issue GN dinged it (rightly) for including a 5.25 or laptop optical bay.

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xternocleidomastoide@reddit

you forgot the /s

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Jeep-Eep@reddit

With the fashion for physical media again, no /s.

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xternocleidomastoide@reddit

k.

LOL

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Slabbed1738@reddit

Dude is delusional lmao

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Important-Permit-935@reddit

what does this have to do with windows from discs? You can already install from USBs and they're much better in every way...

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MrLancaster@reddit

You got horse blinds on. The topic was not about installing windows.

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Important-Permit-935@reddit

I thought you were talking about this

Read the news about DVD/BD drive sales soaring in Japan as people prefer to install Win11 from disks

my bad

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Nicholas-Steel@reddit

That's because a 4K Blueray is stored at like 40 or 50Mbit/s while a stream would maybe be around 15Mbit/s if lucky.

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Strazdas1@reddit

netflix does not reach 15 mbits/s. Youtube is the only streaming platform i saw that hit that mark.

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surf_greatriver_v4@reddit

We know

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hollow_bridge@reddit

the lack of quality 4k streaming is kinda irritating.

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Wemban_yams_it@reddit

It's why I still sail the 7 seas.

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BatteryPoweredFriend@reddit

30-40mbps is bluray 1080p. 4K is nearer the 80-100mbps mark.

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kuddlesworth9419@reddit

1080p BluRay is superior to 4k streaming.

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Nicholas-Steel@reddit

Thanks for the correction.

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Jeep-Eep@reddit

The sneakernet is still king.

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got-trunks@reddit

I just have a script that should scrub anything with the word remux when the lawsuits arrive /s

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Strazdas1@reddit

i would always burn a windows installer to a disc to install from because thats the most reliable way to boot it in. Win 11 was the first time i didnt.

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Tman1677@reddit

I mean USB drives have been just as reliable for booting since... the creation of UEFI? I first learned how to install an OS using CDs, but in hindsight that was completely unnecessary and only because the docs I was learning from were outdated.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Well i was installing OSes since win95 so it was a habit as well as bad experience with USBs early on. I used to do some extra work as private IT help and USB installs were very much hit or miss those days while CD installs always worked. Furthermore, it was unknown computer so CD was a lot less prone to bring home a virus. The habit stuck all the way to win 10 for me.

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ZTE2976@reddit

As someone who uses optical disks daily this is amazing

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toddestan@reddit

It's nice to have options. I don't really need an optical drive in my laptop, but it is nice they have an offering for the people who still want or need one.

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tired_fella@reddit

It's because Japanese offices and departments are slow to change away from physical media and other old standards. So e of their newest professional laptops come with VGA too for similar reasons.

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WJMazepas@reddit

Honestly, VGA makes sense for a lot of offices, not just Japanese ones

Even colleges in my city use VGA to this day on the projectors

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ixid@reddit

You could tape dongles to the projector cables and then not need VGA on the laptop.

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Impossible_Suit_9100@reddit

but dongles get lost or forgotten, better to always have it in a laptop

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ixid@reddit

Not that likely if you tape them in place, then it's just a cable.

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crystalchuck@reddit

Why though?

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nd4spd1919@reddit

Why replace what isn't broken?

Let's say you have to replace projectors in a school with 120 rooms. The cheapest projector on Epson's website is a $420 1024x768 classroom projector, multiplied out that's $50k worth of projectors.

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crystalchuck@reddit

No I get that but "makes sense for most offices" sounds like a positive distinction instead of the negative distinction of being expensive to replace

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smarlitos_@reddit

VGA definition is decent, especially if you’re mainly presenting PowerPoints and papers. You don’t need 4K for that 😅

If you revisit some older tech, you’ll see we’ve had good 900p and 1024p screens and projectors for a while, which look pretty decent for what they have to do

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nd4spd1919@reddit

Schools/Offices live off legacy equipment. My school district handed out laptops with VGA out until around 2022, and the school-owned document cameras still are VGA-only. My BIL's office just last year got rid of around 2 dozen 1280x1024 Dell monitors that IIRC are from 2009 that had still been in use, plugged into USB-C docks with VGA out. As long as its functioning as it should, there's little push to replace and create an unnecessary expense.

Most cheap school/office projectors are XGA, and, even the old ones, are fine for presenting on. By our standards the colors are washed-out, and small text legibility is low, but those things don't really help a powerpoint presentation. Bumping that $420 XGA from my previous example to WXGA adds $200 to the price. A 1080p projector brings the total cost to $1k, and honestly, as someone who presented from a projector on a daily basis, 1080p would have made no difference. It's a way different use case than people using laser projectors as TV replacements in home theaters.

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a60v@reddit

VGA can run for a hundred feet or more with good cable. HDMI and Displayport can't do that without converting to fiber or HDBaseT or something like that. If you're connecting a device at a lectern to a device in a projection booth at the back of the room, this matters.

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Windowsrookie@reddit

Same in Healthcare. We still have 10,000+ LCD monitors in use that are VGA across the hospitals and clinics.

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cocowaterpinejuice@reddit

Physical media is superior because it doesn't go out.

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RazingsIsNotHomeNow@reddit

Tell that to all the Warner Brothers DVDs suffering from disc rot lol

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cocowaterpinejuice@reddit

It's because the companies stopped making new physical media, they went full digitization to own everything.

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Slabbed1738@reddit

Thought my PS3 was broken when my Simpsons Blu-ray didn't work lol

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HuntKey2603@reddit

You've never actually used DVDs have you

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Skrattinn@reddit

Physical media might still see some resurgence. I've noticed some people trending towards physical media (especially in gaming circles) where they're souring on the idea that their software is only 'licensed' and not outright owned. The recent anger over Switch 2 carts being glorified download codes somewhat supports that.

I have zero interest in physical media but I still can't really disagree with the sentiment. The difference between a high bitrate Blu-Ray and low bitrate Netflix stream can be pretty staggering once you actually see the difference.

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pdp10@reddit

high bitrate Blu-Ray

For the curious, 80 Mbit/s is typical for the video portion of a UHD/4K Blu-ray, with H.265 compression. Another 2 Mbit/s for the audio. Format maximum bitrate is 128Mbit/s.

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loozerr@reddit

I don't think there's going to be a resurgence since the same companies control the rights, enshittification just had not gotten as far when physical media was the default. Except for Sony copy protection of course.

For example dvd releases have issues since they're cramming dual layer releases to single layer discs. Vinyls tend to be a money grab with the exact same mix, only technical reason to go for vinyl was that during loudness wars they had a more reasonable mixing.

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hollow_bridge@reddit

both my parents still use optical discs in their systems, for different reasons too.

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kjbbbreddd@reddit

Japanese people also use USB flash drives and the internet to install Windows 11.

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Impossible_Suit_9100@reddit

impossible, i thought they'd still use diskettes

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UGMadness@reddit

Big if true

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porcinechoirmaster@reddit

There are advantages to physical disks. They can't be a trojan for anything except data, and they are intrinsically read-only. It is very difficult to exfiltrate data from a PC via a CD-R when you don't have a burner.

A USB thumb drive can, in addition to being a device designed to be read from and written to, can be a keylogger, a radio, or hell, even a physically destructive device in its own right.

There is a place for read-only, entirely passive media.

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vandreulv@reddit

Sony Rootkit scandal.

No. A disc is not inherently safer than a thumbdrive when it comes to potential data on the disc. There were also manufactured DVDs that abused autorun to try to install copy protection malware on systems.

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hollow_bridge@reddit

That's mostly true, but usb does have more vulnerabilities than discs. You can't destroy hardware with a disc drive.

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Dpek1234@reddit

You can't destroy hardware with a disc drive.

People can get creative

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vandreulv@reddit

You can't destroy hardware with a disc drive.

Most motherboards have fuses on the USB ports by this time since the discovery of USB Killers.

USB Killers are also ridiculously expensive for someone to just be dropping around for random people to pick up.

USB Killers might zap a device, but the odds are, due to traces having to run through to chipsets, data is going to remain unharmed even if the port is fried.

I put a USB Killer on a MacBook Air (Intel based, so 2014ish) that was on its last legs. While the system shut off after plugging it in, all it did was disable that one port and the rest of the system worked fine after turning it back on.

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a60v@reddit

That was more of a Windows problem, with autorun being enabled by default.

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porcinechoirmaster@reddit

I said nothing about the data being safe. I said they can't be a trojan for anything except data.

A thumb drive can contain a flyback transformer, a battery, and a capacitor to take out a motherboard. A thumb drive can both install malware and collect data for removal from a system. A thumb drive can include a radio transceiver and a USB ethernet device to connect a system that's supposed to be airgapped to an external network.

A CD-ROM can do none of those things. Yes, you can install malware on a system via a CD-ROM. You can even do it automatically with the appropriate exploits or bad user settings. But you can't get that data out without another step, and the CD-ROM cannot provide that.

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vandreulv@reddit

A thumb drive can contain a flyback transformer, a battery, and a capacitor to take out a motherboard. A thumb drive can both install malware and collect data for removal from a system. A thumb drive can include a radio transceiver and a USB ethernet device to connect a system that's supposed to be airgapped to an external network.

All of which are pretty expensive devices. And if you're aware enough of the capability of these devices being plugged into a USB port, then you're aware enough to not plug in random shit you find into a system you care about.

Seriously, you're acting like people can just buy USB Killers in bulk and just leave them around for people to find. They're pricey as fuck. So are Rubber Duckies and LAN Turtles.

And it's been YEARS since I've seen anyone carry a USB Flashdrive on their person. Why would anyone just plug random hardware in in the first place these days?

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porcinechoirmaster@reddit

I work in biotech. The company I work for has customers who will not accept systems with functioning USB drives or network interfaces, and instead insist on CD-ROM drives for loading software updates for exactly the reasons I just listed. And no, "just don't let your employees plug stuff in" doesn't pass muster with them.

Again: I am not saying that we should abandon USB. I'm not saying we shouldn't practice good computer security. I am saying that there still exists a place in today's world for passive, read-only data storage. That's it, really.

I'm not exactly sure why this is controversial.

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HobartTasmania@reddit

There is a place for read-only, entirely passive media.

Yes, but there's no point anymore in having any physical drives inside machines either laptops or PC's. I rarely use them anymore anyway and have just one external Blue-ray drive that's USB connected. If I do actually have to use it then I just connect it to the relevant laptop/PC for as long as I need to use it for, also we have been able to USB boot from those externals for a very long time now so if you have to load an OS via a disc you can do it via an USB external drive without issues.

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porcinechoirmaster@reddit

When you don't want the users of a system to have access to USB for safety or security reasons, internal makes sense.

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Strazdas1@reddit

There is if you are a fan of movies. Bluray is still leaks beyond anything you can stream in terms of quality.

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Ptolemaeus45@reddit

wait a second... fujitsu was killed by chinese lenovo 2024? they arent producing hardware anymore as far as i know

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smarlitos_@reddit

This is neat

At the same time, I hope people keep a spare ps2, dvd player, or old laptop with a disk drives for dvd’s. There’s also always separate usb- dvd drives you can buy.

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AntiGrieferGames@reddit

Wait, optical disks laptops still exist? this is a big win!

Also theres still optical disks Dekstop PCs on this date.

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Uptons_BJs@reddit

The greatest laptop I ever owned was a Fujitsu- it was modular so you can swap out the optical drive for a hard drive or battery.

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a60v@reddit

Panasonic still makes models that have this capability (the FZ-55 and FZ-40). It used to be quite common in normal laptops, too.

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Jonny_H@reddit

I think that's pretty standard for any "business" laptop - I had Dell and Lenovo ones with similar modules.

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hollow_bridge@reddit

it was extremely common in consumer laptops too. I think all plastic body laptops could do it.

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logosuwu@reddit

It really stopped being the case some 15 years ago now, since batteries got much smaller and denser and it no longer made sense to put in all the extra components needed to have it modular (able to swap between components at least). Haswell and Broadwell was the last generation of quick swap batteries in general.

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vandreulv@reddit

It was standard for virtually any laptop made before 2000.

Had a Pentium 133 laptop that had battery packs that would go into the CDRom bay.

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hollow_bridge@reddit

Every laptop that I've ever had that had a disc drive could swap out the disc drive. One of my favorite upgrades was swapping it for a second drive bay.

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renyzen@reddit

I remember there was a Lenovo where you could replace the disk drive with a 2nd GPU so you could run dual GTX750M's on a laptop

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patrickhenrypdx@reddit

Didn't the Apple Powerbooks have something like that? Great gear.

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TowardsTheImplosion@reddit

Way back in the day. I think the G3 PowerBook was the last of those...

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SasquatchWookie@reddit

Oh how I wish the minds of Toshiba were still around.

Or mid-stage Vizio

Or early stage Panasonic

Bring back innovative mainstream hardware

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