Portable Add-Ons Slimline DVD-R drive

Advantages: Light, slim
Disadvantages: Needs external power :(

...Like many Laptop users i don't have the money to buy a laptop with a DVD RW built in so i went for the option of having an external drive. I didn't really look into them very much (big mistake) and just got one that looked nice from eBay. Being me i took the word portable to mean you can take this drive anywhere and use it with your laptop like on the train and stuff, i was dead wrong! Mobile means you can take it and use it anywhere lol. So with this drive you need a wall to plug it into, so if you need a mobile drive this isn't for you! If on the other hand you have a lack of space in your house and use a laptop as your main computer and want a DVD burner to attach to it this little baby is great. The LiteOn SLW-831SX is super slim and compact (about 15cm long, 13 cm wide and 2.5cm deep) due to the fact that it doesn't have a trap... Read review

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Advantages: Value for Money
Disadvantages: Occasional faults, long term battery performance

...I was very excited to get my hands on this laptop and I have enjoyed using it. As usual, by buying from Dell it means I have got a very good price for a decent enough machine. The styling isn't likely to win it any awards but it doesn't look bad either. It is quite slimline and nice and light for portable use. The keyboard is a nice size, nicely layed out and contains all the ports (such as 4 USBs and a firewire) you should need. The media direct button is an extra little feature enabling you to manage all your media with ease, without even having to boot up windows. However, I have encountered a few problems with it, ranging from a hard drive with errors on it and a DVD-RW drive which had to be replaced. Although both of these issues caused quite alot of problems I found Dell to be quite helpful in resolving my problems and (during it... Read review

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Advantages: Lightweight, small, portable and has lightsribe technology.
Disadvantages: Quite expensive £70, not the fastest drive around

...second) and this is X so 2X is 2 times as fast (300 kbps) as just X, 3X is 3 times as fast (450 kbps) and so on. This is in bits though and nowadays we work in bytes, there are 8 bits in a byte so this means that to find out how long it should take to burn a full CD (700 megabytes) you find out how many kilobits you have (1024 KB = 1MB) and then diving it by your speed and that is how long in seconds you should be able to write at. Just remember though that you usually won't run at the maximum speed that is possible. I'm sorry if I lost you completely there but to put it simply, the bigger the number the faster it is. DVD Write: DVD+R 8X maximum / DVD+R DL 4X maximum / DVD-R 4X maximum / DVD-R DL 4X maximum Rewrite: DVD+RW 8X maximum / DVD-RW 6X maximum / DVD-RAM 5X maximum Read: DVD-ROM 8X maximum / DVD-RAM 5X maximum CD Write: CD-R 24X... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful