Recently I bought a new CD-ROM and a CD-RW, one to replace an old drive that didn't work anymore. I put a CD my 48x CD-ROM drive - and it sounds like a chainsaw. The drives spins the CD so fast that it is actually slower with small files as it constantly has to speed up and speed down. The noise is truly terrible, and the heat from the drive if spinning for a few minutes can't be good.
Compare that to an 8x drive I've had in my PC for years. It's ultra quiet, and fast with smaller files, and doesn't get hot. I can play CD-ROMs full of mp3s all day and it doesn't get hot or broken. If I did that with my new ones I'd be lucky to hear the mp3s, and I'd probably damage something.
So why are we paying for this crap? I think we've been suckered by the old "bigger numbers is better" sales pitch and bought stuff we don't even need, which is even less usable than before because of it. And does the same go for CPUs, do you think?
