Windows: Optical drives are noisy. RimhillEx slows down the read speed of your CD or DVD drive to keep the noise down.

Nowadays, most of us seldom use our optical drives since everything is downloaded. If you'd like to see your optical drive get some love, turn it into an iPod dock with some scissors and an old CD, while still keeping it usable.

The How-To Geek weblog details how to create a desktop or keyboard shortcut to instantly eject your CD or DVD drive on your Windows computer. The special sauce lies in using the previously mentioned command line tool NirCmd, and you're basically creating a shortcut that executes NirCmd's "cdrom open" command. Quick and simple, when you're done you'll be ejecting from the keyboard any time you want. If you're looking to safely eject your USB drives, on the other hand, we've covered that, too. Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Eject the CD/DVD Drive

Windows only: Freeware application Nero DriveSpeed slows down the read speed of your CD or DVD drive so you don't have to endure the loud jet-engine whirring of your drive every time you want to listen to a CD or watch a DVD on your computer. Obviously there are plenty of times when the 48x read speed of your drive comes in handy—particularly when you are transferring data from an optical disc—but if you're just listening to a CD, for example, your drive really doesn't need to spin up to top speed. After installation, DriveSpeed can prompt you whenever you insert a disk and you can choose whether to run in Fast or Silent mode. Nero DriveSpeed is freeware, Windows only. Nero DriveSpeed