It's smaller than CDs and fit in backpacks. I really like the tape format, and I enjoy the mini disc (MD) style, allowing me to throw medium on the desk without caring if it will get scratched. As an example, I remember when the DVD expert group was debating over as to protect the disc in the casing or not (like the Panasonic PD disk.) They decided not to, to the biggest regret of companies like Blockbuster who are irritating their customers by renting DVD with scratches and digs all over (I've got one of these DVDs with a cigarette burn in it!) However, the format becomes quickly an inconvienience when you decide to keep and use the media. I (don't really) look forward to the days of getting Pre-approved credit card mail on this media. Nowadays, of course, hard drives can hold a hundred CDs worth of data on them, so no one needs to swap CDs much anymore.īeing flexible presents some advantage in the ad business as it becomes possible to send CD like junk mail. No surprise that people jumped at motorized trays when they finally appeared. Thus, instead of making things easier, the single caddy actually made things harder, because in addition to opening the jewelbox, etc, you now had to open the caddy each time and gingerly insert the CD. The problem is that the drive manufacturers decided to shave a few bucks off the price of a drive by only including one caddy with the drive.
And back in the days when a 100Mb hard drive was considered big, people did a lot of CD-swapping.
No opening jewelboxes, no delicately handlind a CD by the edge, no carefully placing it in a tray. Then, when you want to change, you eject one caddy and slap another in. With six caddies, you could put each of your five most frequently used CDs in its own caddy. Who remembers CD caddies? And how much you hated them? Why would you want to go back to that?Ĭaddies made sense if you had several and you needed to switch CDs in your drive frequently.