Most netbooks with 10 inch and smaller displays lack optical disc drives for 4 reasons:
- It helps keep down the cost
- Fewer moving parts to break
- There’s not a lot of room in most netbooks for a disc drive
- Microsoft only makes low cost Windows XP licenses available to PC makers for netbooks that meet strict specifications, and a disc drive isn’t on that list of specs
If you guessed the last item on the list was one of the most important, you’d be right. The other three items aren’t exactly insurmountable. And if you happen to be operating in Shenzhen, China, neither is the fourth. A company called Imore is introducing a 10 inch laptop called the Webbook that will sport a CD/DVD drive. There’s no mention of the operating system, but this netbook likely either runs Linux or an unofficial copy of Windows XP.
Of course, disc drives aren’t as important as they once were. You can download most software from the web, and you can also download music and movies. Still, if you have data stored on a disc that you want to access, or like to listen to CDs or watch DVDs on the go, a disc drive can come in handy.
Aside from the disc drive, the Webbook has all the usual netbook specs including a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160Gb hard drive, 802.11/b/g/n WiFi, and a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display. It has just 2 USB ports, tanks to the disc drive which uses up a fair amount of space. But there is still room for a flash card reader and VGA output.
The laptop has a 2600mAh battery and measures 10.2″ x 7.6″ x 1.2″.
via Shanzai.com