Sony Unveils DVD-RW Notebooks and DVD Software

First came notebooks with CD-R drives. Today, Sony announced the first notebooks equipped with DVD-R/RW drives. While not a surprise, the event is something of a watershed that will likely have other major notebook manufacturers following suit. Sony also announced a $599 stand-alone DVD burner. Christened the Slim Drive Model: PCGA-DVRW1, the drive uses a 4- or 6-pin iLink (IEEE 1394) cable to hook up to iLink-equipped Sony VAIO notebooks and desktops. With the 6-pin cable, the burner can draw power directly from the PC or notebook.

This announcement comes just one day after Toshiba unveiled its new 1X DVD-R/RW drive for notebooks (the unit also records CD-R/RW at 16X and 10X and reads 8X DVD and 24X CD). The SD-R6012 slim combination drive is expected to appear in a number of different manufacturers' notebooks, though no details on exactly which notebook makers would be using the drive were available at press time.

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