Are optical drives excluded from netbooks?

Thomas Riner: YES.but do you need one?NOconnect across a network to your main PC and MAP a NETWORK DRIVEthen buy office or whatever and install it via the shared network drive.have a nice day...Show more

Wally Gower: Have you looked at the size of the netbooks? Exactly where would you put them and what are u planning to leave out to squeeze them in. Macbook Air also doesn't have room for an optical drive and it is a full laptop. From what we are hearing an all new laptop type without optical drives is on the way. I suggest the rest of us get used to buying computers that need external items to fill out the bill.

Lorine Helwick: Yeah having no optical drive is typical for a netbook.For a notebook you would have to pay a bit more. Here is the cheapest new notebook i found on tigerdirect.com:http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool...If you want to add a dvd-drive to your netbook get something like this:http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Search! Tool...Note that such a buspowered drive might need to use 2 usb-ports to function properly if 1 usb-port cant'deliver enough power (it comes with a cable with 2 usb connectors). Especially when writing to dvd powerconsumption wil rise and using both connectors may be needed.Having to buy an external dvd-drive wil make your netbook just a bit cheaper then a cheap laptop so if you need to use dvd's "on the go" then buying a netbook wasn't the most smart thing to do. If you only need to use dvd's at home though then that external dvd should be a good solution because netbooks do have as an advantage that they are more mobile then laptops (smaller, often better batterytime). Because you didn't look at the specs i assume you are a casual or first time netbook buyer so let me point out to you the importance of creating a restorable system-image (for this one needs some free unpartitioned hdd-space, a dvd-writer, or compatible external hdd). I believe your netbook has an "erecove! ry" utility. This utility should allow you to create a "factor! y default" (aka recovery) diskset. Do NOT forget to do this BEFORE intensively using the netbook (the idea being that using the netbook may make the windows on it damaged/compromised and backing up such a windows is of little use, but as long as windows is working properly it's not to late to make a recovery diskset)....Show more