A note for those of purchasing all manner of sexy netbook laptops such as my own, newly-acquired, darling, cobalt blue Samsung NC10:

Just because your laptop lacks a CD or DVD drive doesn’t mean you have to buy an external USB drive to use discs with your computer.

If the only reason you need the drive is for installing software or ripping music you can simply share the drive from any other computer on yor network by right clicking the drive in question and altering its share properties.

Sharing CD-drives in that fashion is a cinch; with DVD drives you might encounter the same error I’ve been hitting, which is that the drive is unavailable. (By contrast, Elise’s DVD drive shares with no issue.) As soon as I figure that one out I’ll get back to you with a solution.

Just now I installed mixing software from my tower’s CDROM drive to my new laptop over the airwaves of my wireless network so that I can work on mixes for potential freelance clients while on the plane to my honeymoon France.

If you told protozoic Peter I’d be doing that in 2008 his head would have probably exploded.