Thinkpads Forum

I am wondering about the success/failure of an external CD/DVD Drive hooked via USB 2.0 with the x60s series.

Ball park how this will affect battery life? This may sound like a dumb question, but for the average/commercially available external USB 2.0 CD/DVD drive is there enough juice supplied?

I am just about sold on buying the x60 (thanks to forums like this one), but i do not know if i feel like spending $200 for the ultrabay.

Thanks for the help.

I put together a slim external DVD drive for $110; I wanted control of the exact DVD-RW I was sticking in the enclosure and I wanted the ability to replace it without buying a whole new enclosure. It works great for me, I haven't had any problems, and it was even recognized by Vista. Other people have bought pre-built, slim external DVD drives and they seem happy.

From my own experience: the X60s can supply enough juice to spin the drive on my particular setup. It can play a DVD and install software without using the AC adapter. It cannot spin up a music CD without the AC adapter...I don't think it can supply enough juice to spin a disk at much more than 4x and it won't recognize the CD unless it's spinning fast.

I've never used the external drive while running off batteries. I suspect it could halve your battery life but that's pure speculation. Mostly, if there's a disk I need I just create an ISO and use that instead of the optical drive. That's part of why I bought a 100GB drive.

Does anyone have experience with using an external DVD reader for watching DVD's during a flight?

Does anyone know if the 9.5 mm thick drives supplied by Lenovo will work in the "slim" optical drive USB enclosures available from multiple sources.

There is an enclosure (~$40) that comes with an internal rechargable 600 mAh lithium battery that charges off the USB port when the drive is not in use, and supplements the USB power during operation. While 600 mAh is not a great deal of capacity, it may be enough to spin up CDs and play DVDs.

Allan

apd wrote:Does anyone have experience with using an external DVD reader for watching DVD's during a flight?

I have no such experience but have you considered ripping DVDs to the hard drive? That way you have to carry less when you travel.

FredFromNYC wrote:

apd wrote:Does anyone have experience with using an external DVD reader for watching DVD's during a flight?

I have no such experience but have you considered ripping DVDs to the hard drive? That way you have to carry less when you travel.

.

That would be the easiest thing to do.