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Time to retire the driver CD-ROM in ALFA products?

Time to retire the driver CD-ROM in ALFA products?

Weigh in down below in the comments and let us know what you think.

Rokland Technologies is both a distributor and partner of ALFA Network Inc. We are evaluating the idea of removing driver CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs from future product shipments. This process has several benefits:

  1. Reduced incoming freight- removing 2000 CDs from a shipment of 2000 WiFi adapters would have a small reduction in overall freight cost. Though the savings would be minor, it can help offset other cost increases we face as a business, and help us keep from raising prices over time.

  2. Reduced shipping expense to the end user- coupled with #1 above, our calculations show us with the CD, some 9 oz shipments could become 8 oz, which up to $0.70 lower postage cost to zone. Though free economy shipping is offered to all of our US buyers, this savings for us will again help offset other rising costs

  3. Reducing carbon footprint- the cost to make the CD and write the data to the CD does have an impact on carbon emissions. In a recent Wired magazine article, a programmer calculated reducing the lines of web code on his web site saved enough server processing power to reduce emissions by the equivalent of flying from New York to Amsterdam and back 85 times. 

Thinking of the computing and power that goes into making the disc, plus the freight involved from overseas to here, and here to you, perhaps it could be a similar reduction over time.

We are finding that many newer PCs do not have a CD or DVD drive any more, and many of our products are plug and play in Windows 10. If you did need a driver download, we would have it available for free download in our Support center. Drivers can be downloaded directly to the PC on which they need to be used, or a different device and transferred by USB flash drive.

We want to weigh the benefits of discontinuing CDs and DVDs with the convenience our users may get from having them, so please let us know your thoughts in the comments below. 

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