Netbook with Optical Drive Arriving from Asus

Here's the optical driveSometimes 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.

You’re sure to pay a premium for the pleasure of a SuperMulti DVD, which should pair nicely with the new GN40 chipset and Intel Atom N280. How much is the million-dollar question. DigiTimes has the suggested retail pegged at 18,000 to 20,000 NT$ which works out to $531 to $590U.S. Of course, pricing in various countries usually isn’t a straight conversion and I’d be willing to bet that we’ll see this unit around $450 or so with the drive. I’m happy with my external USB drive for the oh-so-rare times I need it, but I can see the desire to have one of these if you want to watch DVD movies without ripping them to a hard drive. Yes, yes, I know: and for software installs too. That’s of limited value to me these days and becoming less and less of a reason to have an optical drive. I’m still living in a browser for the majority of my tasks and/or I can install apps by downloading them when needed. I’m probably in the minority here.

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