laptop and cd burner

[brianl0202]

i have an ibm thinkpad laptop with xp on it. it has a cd-rom in it. i want a cd-burner that i can use with my laptop. do i have to get an external cd-burner? can i replace the cd-rom with a burner? help

You can replace the existing CD-ROM w/ a CD-RW. Look for one at Pricewatch. You don't have to get one that matches your model of laptop. The guts are all the same on laptop drives, it's just they usually have some adapter to install on the system board. You might have to do a little screwdriver work to take the old CD-ROM out of the adapter and install the CD-RW.

AC Micro has one for $69 +s/h

Here are the specs on it.

[brianl0202]

are the burners for laptops harder to find? i dont see too many of the slim ones or am i just looking in the wrong places

[HeadBand]

or if you dont want to mess with it you could get an external one...does your laptop have usb2.0...if it dosent you could get a pcmcia controler card

[brianl0202]

it has a usb port but i dont think its 2.0, is there a way to tell? any advantage/disadvantage of external vs. internal besides having to install the internal one?

Here are some more from Price Watch. I just did a search for "notebooks" under their CD Burner subject. Looks like you'll find cheaper with this one though.

[brianl0202]

thanks for your help evilrick

[HeadBand]

look in device manager to see if it's 2.0...it is backwards compatible but you wont be able to burn as fast

external may be a disadvantage if you're looking for mobility with your cd burner but it also has the advantage of being able to copy between 2 cds and not store it on the harddrive

[brianl0202]

if i get an external burner, what is everything else i need. im assuming it is not usb 2.0 but i havent been able to check yet.