Ultraportable notebook DVD drive?

[crabbytech]

Bought a cheapy p3, but the dociking station only had cdrom, how could i upgrade this so i can watch DVD's?

all external DVD drives require a mains power source is this correct?

Its a 12" HP.

[tin]

Originally Posted by crabbytech

Bought a cheapy p3, but the dociking station only had cdrom, how could i upgrade this so i can watch DVD's?

all external DVD drives require a mains power source is this correct?

Its a 12" HP.

Buy an external DVD drive, or repalce the docking station CD drive with one (it's probably just a normal laptop CD drive.)

Yes. All external optical drives will require some kind of external power. I doubt you'd even find one that used a keyboard socket or similar, because optical drives use a fair ammount of power.
You may find one that is USB bus powered, but it would be very slow to conserve power.

[sinerster_one]

i was in a similar situation to yours

only had an external cdrom in an external caddy that ran off the lappy's power (no ext. power unit)

just bought a used notebook dvd rom in the trading post and whacked it into the caddy and voila

i think i have a spare 4x Toshiba DVD-ROM from that trade

i can also include a HP adapter thing that fits on the back of the drive

or you can pull off the one off your existing cd and put that on the back of the dvd (like i did)

i managed to transplant it in all of 5 minutes without knowing squat about notebook drives