What to do when your netbook is missing a CD/DVD drive

I get a lot of questions from readers and clients asking me what the difference is between a notebook and a netbook. It's one of the reasons I posted the recent article The naughty and nice of netbooks.

One of the disadvantages to netbooks, as mentioned in the article, is that many of them do not come with any kind of optical (CD or DVD) drive. While technically this is a disadvantage, it doesn't mean you can't work around it.

In fact, my good friend Andy over at the Digitante has written his own blog post specifically teaching people how to get around it. It's titled CD/DVD driveless... and if you are one of the ones wondering how to get around the optical-driveless netbook dilemma, it's well worth a read.

I'll warn you that the solution may be a little above most noobies' heads. But I'm linking to the article anyway because I want to reinforce that not having an optical drive should not be a limiting factor when making a decision whether or not a netbook is right for you.

And for the techies out there, if you have an alternate solution not mentioned in Andy's blog post, leave a comment below. I'd love to hear what you've come up with.