Suggestion for thin / light laptop with good battery and DVD drive

[RollWave]

Anyone have some suggestions for an ultrabook type laptop with a DVD drive?

 

[jana519]

Why are you looking for an ultrabook with a DVD drive?

 

[RollWave]

My dad would like a laptop that he can play DVDs on and travel with. The other option is to just get one of those travel DVD players with a 10" screen but they all look so cheap.

 

[Commodus]

There is no Ultrabook with a DVD drive, I'm afraid. The spec (at least, the one that Intel gave) literally precludes it.

I did quick searches of both Best Buy and Newegg and it's not looking good. You may be looking at a business laptop or a refurb to get an optical drive. Has your dad considered watching downloads from iTunes or Google Play?

 

[Red Storm]

If you absolutely need a DVD drive, I would get an external USB one.

 

[luv2liv]

no such thing as ultrabook with dvd drive.
usb dvd drive with ultrabook or tablet. i wonder if VLC can play dvd via usb to an android tablet. will have to try that tonight!

 

[RossMAN]

My dad would like a laptop that he can play DVDs on and travel with. The other option is to just get one of those travel DVD players with a 10" screen but they all look so cheap.

If you can convince your Dad to drop the DVD drive and image the movies, he can get a pretty nice deal:

XPS 13 - 9343 Certified Refurbished - SA
System Price: $719.00
Processor: Intel Core 5th Generation i3-5010U Processor (3M Cache, 2.10 GHz)
Windows 10 Pro
128GB SATA Class 20 Solid State Drive
4GB Memory
13.3inch FHD (1920 x 1080) infinity display
Intel HD Graphics

$503.30 after coupon, after receiving the laptop I would suggest upgrading the hard drive to something larger.

Review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP6oTd_OhoA
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/Dell-XPS-13-2015.htm

Edit: Price goes up by 5% ($35.95) Thursday 6/16 10am ET. Dell Outlet stock is constantly replenishd sthroughou the day check every 15 or 30 minutes or constantly refresh.

 

[holden j caufield]

My wife has one it's a Toshiba r930 laptop. It's not ultra thin like the surface but it's pretty thin with a dvd drive, my t430s is pretty thin with a that option.

 

[RossMAN]

If the OP can convince his father to burn DVDs, how much disk space does the average 2 hour movie occupy?

 

[paperwastage]

If the OP can convince his father to burn DVDs, how much disk space does the average 2 hour movie occupy?

(ignoring any potential issues with DRM)

if it's a straight disc clone (aka copy the contents of DVD to drive), it's at most 5GB (single layer DVD)-10GB (dual layer DVD)

if you want to spend time transcoding/compressing the DVD into a smaller space, you can probably get away with 1-2GB per movie (but this means you need a decent machine with CPU power to do compression, and might take longer than just a straight disc clone)


BluRay would be much larger and more complicated to handle

 

[JeffMD]

Check out the Asus F555LA series, it it is about as thin as you can get with an optical drive, and they start out with pretty cheap loadouts and go up from there.

 

[RollWave]

Dad is 72 and doesn't have time to do any sort of ripping of his media. He takes these DVD computer lectures that he just enjoys watching.

Anyone have a good experience with those standalone DVD player things with a screen?