DVD vs Online Download?

I recently purchased the Visual Studio Professional 2008 with MSDN Premium subscription from http://msdn.microsoft.com and I was glad to see that I am still able to get a hard copy (CD/DVD format) of all, or a majority, of the software that came with the subscription. Who wants to sit there and download all the software that comes with that subscription? For those of you who have never dealt with a MSDN subscription there is approx 381 various products to download and that is NOT including the various versions within those products such as; x86, x64, ia64, Enterprise, Web, Developer, Standard, Professional, Ultimate, Premium, Starter, etc.. To add to it all you have to use a burning software (Roxio Creator 10 with a Plextor SATA drive is by far the fastest solutions i have used, not saying there isn't a faster solution out there) to create the bootable/installation disc. What a PIA ya know!

The purchase of a new laptop is another example of not receiving the installation media with your newly purchased machine. Sometimes and yes not ALL the time, do you even get the resource CD which contains the drivers if you ever have to reinstall a piece of hardware. you have to go out to the manufactures website and search to hopefully find the correct driver for the correct version of that piece of hardware. The Operating System (OS) disc NEVER comes with the new device, however, HP does offer the ability to create a restore disc. The ability to create the restore disc is a one shot thing so don't screw up the burning process or think you have the right discs to burn with and, like me one time, have 2 discs that work then the rest don't. Makes no sense sometimes just supply the damn discs!

There are times that when having the ability to download software online is nice. I will take the Games for Windows Live for an example, I recently purchased the Batman Arkham Asylum and it gave me the ability to download it from their site rather than wait for the disc to show up several days later. I know I could have gone to Best Buy or some other comparable store and purchased the hard copy but this was 10 pm and Best Buy isn't exactly open then and I wanted to play the damn game, lol!

So I guess what I am trying to get at is give the customer the CHOICE to choose whether or not they want the discs when they have paid good money for something, rather than not supplying the discs or giving the option to obtain the discs in some tangible format. The ability to get the discs use to be a standard, no questions asked, you just received the discs in the package.