Software on a stick?
4
.
December
2008
written by
Clemens Lang
at
Dec 4th 2008, 13:39
When you buy software in stores you usually get a box with a CD, DVD or even a couple of DVDs. But isn’t that kind of – old-fashioned?
Why is the software industry still using optical media to distribute software? Besides the few companies that offer software downloads everybody else ships CDs or DVDs. I occasionally wonder why they don't use USB flash drives? Flash drives are
-
small (from a hardware point of view)
USB drives are much smaller and thus much more portable than optical media - large (in terms of storage capacity)
flash memory can easily store the amount of data a DVD can and the amount will certainly grow in the future - robust
try to break apart a CD, and then do the same with a flash drive
- cheap
I don't know the exact price per Gigabyte of a CD or DVD, but USB drives are quite cheap as well.
I'm not a business analyst, but imho thumb drives are a serious alternative to optical media especially since there will be more PCs or laptops without any optical drive (such as the MacBook Air) in the future.