I was told that after so many cd's they are made to just die...is this true?

After intensively (ab)using a device, it will 'die' eventually...

I highly doubt it, but perhaps someone here may have the "inside" scoop...interesting, if true.

The short answer is "no." All electronics have a MTBF (mean time between failures) and will eventually fail. I have friends that still have 2X CD burners that are working fine. What all computer products DO have is built-in obsolescence. People will USUALLY want to upgrade to the newest, fastest versions... if someone is burning enough CDs to make their CD burner fail from use, that person is a PRIME candidate for the new 52X CD-RW drives...

All they need to do is keep making them faster in order to keep re-selling.

IceNine said:

electronics geek!

I heard a few years back that the burners are usually good for about 1000+ burns. don't know if it was true, or if it's still the same.

No, they don't. As someone already said, the device will have a rated MTBF based on the typical yields of the components and the results from testing... they last bloody ages. I still have a working 2x and a working 4x lying around somewhere. At least you can be sure that they will generally last at least as long as the warranty

Anyway a lot of new machines have combo drives to cut costs... a single combo DVD, CDROM, CDRW drive. So for many people, their CDRW drive is their only optical drive used day in and day out.

Most optical media drives are pretty resilient... the only probs I've come across myself have been caused by either condensation or dirt on the lenses, or motor problems such as on the earlier CAV/CLV drives (when they first introduced the combo CAV - constant angular velocity - and CLV - constant linear velocity - drives years ago)

Hard drives on the other hand, are terribly fragile, with appallingly unrealistic MTBF ratings. Which is why people invest in RAID arrays so they can hot-swap drives as they fail.