Does such a thing exist? I’m thinking of getting a netbook for my upcoming travels, but it would be handy to have a DVD drive too and I can’t be arsed messing around with an external unit.

Am I looking for the moon on a stick?

i thought that netbooks didnt have optical drives, by definition

Netbooks are small for a reason 🙂

rip your DVDs to ISOs (DVD Decrypter) on a usb pendrive and then mount the ISO (Power ISO) to watch the DVD using your media player of choice.

Well given the whole point of a netbook is to be small and light by eliminating stuff such as optical drives, such a thing inherently doesn’t exist. Either get a full size laptop or bite the bullet with an external one – not really that much hassle, and it does mean you have full compactness when you don’t need the DVD. Personally I just ripped stuff to my HD via another computer with a DVD last time I travelled with a netbook.

Hmm, okay, I give in 🙁

Looks like it’s a dull DVD rip-a-thon session then…

Alternatively you can pick up an external usb DVD writer for around £40 – £50.

For £20 you can get a USB powered DVD drive that’s not much bigger than the dvd itself. It’s a bit of a faff mind….

+1 external DVD drive for the times when you need it.

Asus did an EEE a while back that had an optical drive, so it’s definitely possible. I’ve not seen once recently though.

In all honesty, I’d say an external drive is probably your best bet. You don’t have to lug it about when you’re not using it, and the “messing about” you cite is nothing more plugging it in. It’ll take longer to eject the tray and load a disc.

The DVD disks aren’t going to be very compact. How many ripped ISOs can you get on an external drive?