MD is based on Magneto-Optical recording technology which has a very high life expectancy and is not affected much by heat and light - better than CDR.

I suspect CDs will be readable quite a long way in to the future. The next generation is DVD and all DVD players can read CDs so that looks quite promising for the physical format remaining a standard while the capacities and speeds go up.

My operating system (Debian GNU/Linux) was installed from double sided DVD - 9Gb on one disk, shiny on both sides. Binary on one side, source on the other. Unspeakably neat and cool.... but I digress

Anahata