Sony: Why drive when it's better to fly?

Congratulations, Sony!

Apple released an ultra-slim laptop with no optical drive last month, and Sony's just now perfecting and standardizing yesterday's technology as we're about to rest it on the shelf next to the 3.5 floppies - or better still leaning against the 5-1/4's!

Nice work with those liquid and wave simulator algorithms, which by the way makes me wonder if the future of Sony is as technology company and not retail consumer electronics manufacturer. Their strength seems there, why not their focus? Nostalgia? Atari 2600? iPod sticking out of Walkman's butt? So many distractions.

Spot on, most everyone won't miss the laptop burner as Steve Jobs announced with the drive-free Air. I've carried around a blank disc for two years now, and it's still blank, and I'll most likely tote around the extra bytes on the hard drive if I want a few movies. Wireless media streamers are about as affordable as high-end DVD players, and a software equation will undoubtedly encode to Super HD one way or another, as it already does in HD straight from the musical core of the Apple iTunes store.

If anything the media companies have pushed the obsolescence of the disk because I can't easily buy it and tote a copy of it around on my laptop and leave the disc at home in my collection. Or even burn a copy in case I roll one down the airplane aisle and Bubba squashes it like a starved pigeon under his Timberland. Where's the value in that?

I like the DVD. I like vinyl. Heck I even like 8-track. But the CD's archival qualities don't seem to rival the throwback to tape... so there's a perfect Sony business opportunity: while there perfecting HD disc resolution can you throw some development into BlueRay tape for me to record those CD's onto? Meanwhile, Apple and others will focus on bringing the same quality in wireless HD.

No matter how you slice it, or how many times you dice it, duplicity is the ultimate solution in data storage and takes full advantage of the raison d'être of the web in the first place, potentially eliminating the catastrophic effects of heat, fire or water damage; human domestic reconfiguration; and dog chews. And wireless is tireless:

"The cloud ate my homework, Mrs. Hansennn!"