With a growing number of mini-laptops packing NVIDIA ION graphics, it’s becoming more and more common to find notebooks that have no optical disc drives, but which are capable of handling Blu-Ray playback. The solution? You could rip your movies using another machine, but that takes ages. Or you could find a portable Blu-Ray drive that you can throw in…

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While I wouldn’t say the lack of an optical disc drive is necessarily a defining feature of a netbook, the truth is that most 10 inch and smaller laptops lack disc drives because there’s just not much room for them. This also helps keep the price down, and cuts back on the number of moving parts that can break, so…

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One of the things that’s set netbooks apart from fuller featured computers from day one is that most netbooks don’t have optical disc drives. They take up a lot of space, cost money, and add more breakable moving parts. With more and more software available in downloadable form and the preponderance of cheap USB flash drives and SD cards for…

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Microsoft designed Windows Vista under the assumption that the computer industry was only moving in one direction: Faster, more powerful machines. The company was wrong, and a lot of people found that Vista simply didn’t run well on their older or slower hardware. Or on netbooks which tend to have slower processors than their more expensive brethren. So Microsoft went…

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By definition, netbooks are small, light and ultraportable. But it’s hard to pack everything that you’d expect from a full sized laptop into a compact case. And one of the first things to go is usually the optical disc drive. If all you plan to do with your netbook is surf the web, check your email, and maybe enjoy some…

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Don’t forget, there are just a few more days left to enter the Liliputing/Asus slim USB DVD±R/RW giveaway. Asus has been kind enough to sponsor the latest contest in our month-long Liliputing Birthday Bash (I think we look pretty good for a one year old). The contest is open to contestants in the United States. We’ll send an Asus SDRW-08D1S-U…

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One of the things that sets most netbooks apart from higher priced ultraportables is the lack of an optical disc drive. Sure, there are plenty of ways to install software and operating systems or enjoy music and movies without a disc drive. But sometimes life is a lot easier if you do have one — especially if you want to…

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The Asus Eee PC 1004DN is the first Asus netbook to sport an optical disc drive. Heck, it’s one of the first netbooks from any company to make room for a disc drive. While I’d originally heard that this model wasn’t scheduled for release in the US anytimesoon, Asus filed documents related to the 1004DN with the FCC in February,…

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So I just picked up a cheap USB DVD-RW drive to make the process of installing operating systems and other software on optical disc-less liliputers a bit easier. And when I took it out of the box, I couldn’t help but notice just how much larger it is than the computers I’ll be using it with.The HP Mini-Note is already…

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