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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

Did they still send AOL CDs to anyone in the recent times?

That would be crazy given that having a CD drive hasn't been standard on new laptops for like a decade— Apple's last portable computer with an optical drive was 2016.

According to ChatGPT, the final AOL free trial CDs were in 2006.

You would think dial up was dead already for a long time too, but apparently it wasn't.

The elderly and maybe the very rural. I have a tough time thinking there is anyone rural enough who would not go for satellite internet though. Satellite TV is pretty standard in the country.

I wonder how usable (probably pretty slow) dialup would be at this point. Somewhat of a comment of bloated web pages but also the reality.

Probably only good for email at this point and I think for some that's fine.

Yeah, but I expect many of those people just use smartphones.

I think its just pricepoint. Dial up was like $20 or $25 a month. If someone cares so little about modern internet to be fine with dial up speeds, they don't want to spend the money for satellite internet plus the dish and installation costs.

Dial up bandwidth is of course bad, but how is latency in dial up vs satellite? Geosync orbit satellite latency is abysmal, unless you are talking about low orbit.

LEO isn't great if you're surrounded by trees, unfortunately.

I know a lot of people that were previously unhappy with their old ISP, went to LEO, and then returned to their old ISP within 1-3 months.

How much would it be to mass manufacture and mail CDs these days?

Feels like it would be a fun marketing gag.

Yeah if anything you could print a qr code on it for people to download the content directly. Probably $1-$2 per disc.

Perhaps some type of retro futuristic nostalgia millennial gag.

That's actually a pretty genius idea if one were promoting a tech product with retro vibes and mailing to journalists/media. The main messaging would just be the color printing on the disc and sleeve as few would have a CD-ROM drive handy to play it, but those that do would love it if you put something cool on the disc (maybe a short Myst-like adventure with a product tie-in).

I still have a SATA CD/BD-ROM drive in my main PC system under the desk, not because I need or use it much but because the system is in an older tower PC case on wheels that I keep putting new mobos in because it's high-quality, flexible, roomy, quiet and has a ton of slide-out media bays. The CD-ROM has just stayed installed in the case as new mobos get installed and there's always extra SATA ports to plug it into.

I'm just waiting for the day some TikTok trend of people using CDs again hits and it will drive a wave of kids buying CD-ROM drives to get in on it.

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