Thank You ProFantasy!

Highland_Piper

I don't need support, I just didn't know which category to place this in. I just bought a new computer

INTEL® Core™ i7-7700K Quad Core 4.20 GHz 8MB Cache LGA1151 + HD Graphics
Corsair H45 Liquid Cooling System 120MM Radiator
250 GB SSD + 2 TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 7200rpm Hard Drive
16 Gig memory
ASUS Prime Z270-P INTEL Z270 Chipset, ATX Mainboard w/ 4 RAM slots, 2 PCIe x16, 4 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x1, 1 SATA Express, 4 SATA3, 2 x M.2
MSI GeForce® GTX 1080 Ti 11GB Video Card VR READY

anyone see what's missing? An optical drive. Apparently new computers don't come with an optical drive as standard hardware anymore. I didn't even check, I just assumed they still came with them.

So I just wanted to say thank you to ProFantasy for allowing those of us who have purchased physical copies to also be able to digitally download the software. Otherwise I'd have no way to install it.

JMunsonII

Most software is now available by download now - the physical thing is going by the wayside. This is probably why the drives aren't included anymore. However, if you need an optical drive, the LG series of Blu Ray drives is rather good - I have one.

Your setup is similar to my new one. I have the same processor, a Cooler Master Pro 240, 2x 1.1TB Crucial MX300's, 32GB DDR4-3200 G.Skill TridentZ RGB RAM, Corsair 540 Air case, ASUS Maximus IX HERO ATX board (Z270 series), an EVGA 1070 FTW2 ICX GPU, and an LG BH16NS40 Blu Ray drive. I just added two 4TB Seagate drives (NewEgg had them on sale for $99/ea) for extra storage and local backup.

JimP

There is always a need for physical backups... as a 35 year comoputer tech I have seen many changes, but leaving out a drive so I can store or load, makes no sense to me. What will I watch my dvd movies with ? I use external USB hard drives for back ups.

taustinoc

Posted By: JimPThere is always a need for physical backups... as a 35 year comoputer tech I have seen many changes, but leaving out a drive so I can store or load, makes no sense to me. What will I watch my dvd movies with ? I use external USB hard drives for back ups.

I agree, but there isn't much that can't be bought as a download these days, and more and more that can *only* be bought that way. And even DVDs are only a few GB, where I have at least four flash drives in my pocket right now that hold several times that. Backups can be done online (ala Carbonite), or with an external hard drive (and backup media should be removable anyway).

So it's understandable that computers don't automatically include an optical drive any more. Manufacturers are cheap, and it saves them a few bucks. And it's an easy add-on, if you realize you need to.

(What surprised me was a recent computer we got here at work, absolute monster machine with 6 core Xeon processor and 64 GB of RAM, came with an optical drive, but it's ROM only. We found this out when we needed to burn a CD with security video for the cops. Who even *makes* read-only optical drives these days? Dell, apparently. Sigh.)

JMunsonII

I backup via BackBlaze and that's been great. Servers, etc., I'm starting to recommend Datto - both local and online at that point.

JimP

I don't use online backups, I prefer to have physical on my shelf backups in one form or another.

Not that I miss 5.25 inch floppies though, because I don't. At least i never had to deal with 8 inch floppies or disk pacs... oh, I did have to key an eye on disk pacs at university, but just for 4 years.

Highland_Piper

I got an external optical drive so I can use my discs now.