Mayayana wrote:


If you have to buy an external DVD drive that would
be part of the cost of the computer. Not an economical
solution.

But when you buy USB peripherals, they can be
shared around the computer room. So buying one
is enough for the whole house.

When the CDRW in my current computer case was
declared "obsolete", I removed it and didn't replace
it. The "floater" USB DVDRW has taken its place,
and most of the time, isn't plugged in.

There are a few pieces of software that are *adamant*
that the optical drive appear (magically) on an
IDE cable. If you ever have to deal with that
kind of hard-coded software, you're screwed :-)
That's one situation where the floater isn't
good enough.

Paul