So everyone says. Probably. But I reckon the laser or other stuff will still give up first. I do it!

duno but i do it too

1) "I'm an IT consultant (read: over-titled tech), and I really can't say I know of too many people who actually close the drive with the button. Almost everyone pushes the tray back in, as they respond to the pressure, and then retract themselves." Source and further information: http://www.goodexperience.com/tib/archives/2004/07/pc_cd_trays.html 2) "My brother is convinced that whether it is on a DVD player or a computer, you should never manually push the tray in, because this causes the hardware to break down faster. He insists that I use the button to retract the tray. I never seem to remember to do this, since gently pushing the tray retracts it just fine. I have been doing this for years and none of my hardware has ever had a broken CD or DVD tray." "This falls into a strange place that I can't say I've yet to find any reason to give the nod one way or another. If you've disassembled as many drives as I have, I've never found "wear" on these parts. Just broken parts from accidents. Sorry but I think this one is a personal choice. Add to that desktop DVD recorder prices are all of 30 to 50 bucks and we aren't talking big bucks." "I'm an old IT pro and I can tell you the following: When the first CD players appeared, they came with instructions that said that you should never push the caddy, it might hurt the electric motor inside. As I recall, the first CD-ROMs came with similar instructions. I actually threw one of those away the other day, a stand-alone (there were no others) 1x CD-ROM for a Mac... I still have my HP Personal Computer (their own architecture) from the beginning of the '80s." "I have replaced at least 6 cd or dvd drives. Two of them I replaced because the automatic open/close mechanism quit. I had been manually closing those 2 drives. The drives were about 2 or 3 years old when I had to replace them. When I quit pushing in the trays, the drives lasted until I replaced them (upgrades)." "I've always suggested that users use the button or s/w cmds. to open/close the tray. Yes, you can manually close the tray, however when kids are involved, things can get hairy. Those trays that have broken usually have cracked gears or gear strips being off track and/or simply broken. Under normal wear&tear, that just doesn't happen unless by manual force. It seems that some CD drives are cheaply made it *may* introduced a greater number of failures, but that's my opinion. Of course you do what's needed, but if it happens on your watch, guess who gets the blame." Source and further information: http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7588_102-0.html?hhTest=1&forumID=70&threadID=226698&messageID=2364732