Burning CDs

I'm using my laptop to burn 16 CDs to give out in class tonight. It's going to take about 45 minutes to do it. Years ago, at Apple, I had access to the first commercial CD writer, made by Kodak. It cost $10,000 and took 45 minutes to write a blank CD, which had less capacity than CDs do now. Those blanks were $10 each, so when you had a write error, it was a little more painful than it is today. The CD Writer was also huge -- bigger than two VCRs are today. Now, of course, CD-RW drives cost very little and come with almost every computer. Blanks are around 10 cents each. Quite a difference. People sometimes say that CDs aren't reliable as archival media, but I still have the CDs I made in 1993 and they are still working. Of course, I didn't leave them in the sun or flip them around, so they are in good shape.