Also, I and many many others will still need Optical Drives because of the slow download speeds, our big library of optical drives, and the horrendous quality of downloaded stuff right now.
However, I do agree that the time has come for the internal optical drive to die, if there is a good alternative to the space. What will you use the lack of external bays on a tower case for? More fans to cool what already is decently cooled? Weight savings on a Laptop sound reasonable though. So as long as there is no BENEFIT of canning the drive bays on a tower, the optical drive lives on there.
Either way though, this should not be a problem to anybody, as light laptops for ODD haters do exist, and external drives are sleek, light, and fast with usb3. No conflict, no problem, everybody's happy.