“Sometimes we see devices at the CES that never get launched. Luckily, this isn’t one of those times. That ASUS Eee PC with the integrated optical drive we eye-spied in January is about to arrive in mid-April, says DigiTimes. It’s the same 1004DN we glimpsed during our ASUS booth tour and that integrated optical drive looks mighty slim.”

So now, the question is; do you really need an optical drive in a netbook? For the longest time, my main workhorse is the Lenovo X60 Thinkpad. No optical drive there and I have never missed it. Everything is either online or easily transported on a USB drive nowadays that you can hardly see a CD or DVD media at work or at home. And then you need to ask yourself why you are using a netbook in the first place. I am sure the main reasons are portability, weight, battery life above the rest. So having an optical drive on a netbook sounds like an innovation initially but it is questionable if it is really needed.

Source: www.jkontherun.com