Mini Optical Drives for the Netbook

Vmedia pushes for the use of optical drives in netbooks.

Who wants an optical drive in their netbook? While many users would feel that an addition of such a drive would add to the bulk and weight of their trusty portable, Vmedia would beg to differ.

What Vmedia is offering are small discs measuring roughly 36mm by 36mm. Vmedia claims that these discs can hold 1 GB of data or an entire 576p (720 by 576) pixel movie. In about a year, this capacity should double and will also be available in two layer, being capable of writing.

Vmedia's execs believe that the netbook is similar to a portable DVD player and that customers are expecting to be able to view entertainment on them.In addition to netbooks, Vmedia hopes that these discs will one day be included in cell phones and mobile internet devices (MIDs). Vmedia claims that "within months" their partners will announce products incorporating these integrated drives. Vmedia has not released any information on who their partners are in this endeavor.

So can't a customer accomplish the same feat by using an SD card? Wendy Volan, Vmedia's VP of Marketing says,

"Cost is one advantage of Vmedia. We are manufactured the same way as optical discs are. SD is a fantastic medium, particularly as a recordable medium for your photos, music, and video. But things that needs to happen especially in terms of the SD slot is the industry standard but the platforms these are in are not and the video players need to be developed for reach platform. Many consumers think they have an SD card slot I should be able to play it really you have to get to the point where you have a player than can play it all."

She believes that moving towards downloadable media is going to take awhile and Vmedia is the answer to filling in the gap.

If it were up to me, I'd stick with small and light. I can download all my media from the internet, and if that's not available, I always have my trusty Sandisk 8 GB USB stick.  But who knows, only time holds the real answer!