What is the best external cd/dvd drive is best for my dell mini 9?

Q. I have a dell mini 9 and I want to add an external cd/dvd burner drive and I was just wondering if anyone could make a suggestion.

A. When it comes to external hardware components, only a couple of things really matter for picking something out (not counting cost): What type of connector do they use? How much resources do they require (RAM is usually what resources refer to, though not always)? Are the drivers comptatible with your OS? And then there are the performance specs, which are easy to define with disc (optical media are called discs while magnetic media are called disks by industry jargon) drives: Read/write speed: faster=higher#=better; functionality: what formats does it support and what do you need it to support? The formats are CD-R/RW(recordable/rewritable), DVD: DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-R DL, DVD+R DL, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RW DL, DVD+RW DL, DVD-RW2, DVD-RAM, DVD-D and of course HD DVD and BlueRay formats (RW stands for rewritable meaning you can save stuff to repeatively, R stands for recordable which means you can save stuff to it, but to save new things to the disk it has to be reformatted which erases whatever data was originally on it, and DL stands for Dual layer, which means data is stored on two layers transparent layers of the disk allowing more information to be put on the disk.) There are drives that support nearly all the formats though not one that supports every format period, so you should know what formats you will be using. There is another format for all discs, ROM(Read only memory) but typically ROM discs are supported by all drives unless the disc is blueray or HD DVD, for which you need the newst drives. There are some plug and play DVD/CD drives available, which are easy to use and install (actually a lot of them are, but not all). Basically it depends on what you will be using the drive for specifically. If you will only use DVDs and CDs, you don't need a blueray player/burner. There are also drives with special features like lightscribe. If you want to make monochrome disc pictures (the top of the disc is a laser sensitive material that creates a monochrome picture on the disc, which if it were in color would make the disc look like a commerically produced DVD movie lol) then get a drive with the lightscribe logo on it (this will mean a more complex installation, but not very hard.) One other thing to consider is what will be on the discs. If it is just used for storage, you probably don't need a high speed DVD drive, while if you are playing the newest games, you may want the faster drives. I am unable to give you a specific brand or model to buy, but this may help narrow things down or give you an idea of what to look for. One last thing, if you want to have a high read/write speed make sure the connection you are using is also fast. USB 2.0 has a top speed of 480Mbits per second while a newer version of firewire is a little over 1Gbits per second. A USB 3.0 will soon be coming out also, which is comparable to SATA and SATA II speeds, but you need the right port for connecting those also. Most likely you have USB 2.0 ports, a good chance you also have some form of fire wire (I know of three different versions with different speeds of firewire and I know there are also multiple form factors where the plugs are different sizes also.

Can the webcam built into the Dell Mini 9 computer take pictures?

Q. I recently purchased one, and was curious as to if the webcam built into it could take pictures, similar to the program Photobooth on some apple computers. Please help me. Thanks!

A. I'm pretty sure all webcams can make pictures, but I can't be positive about this one.

How do I completely get rid of Ubuntu from my Dell Mini 9 ?

Q. I hate it, I hate it. I need to get rid of this ridiculous, worthless piece of crap and install Windows. Does anyone know how I can completely rid my computer of this so I can put Windows XP on my mini 910? Simplistic answers are welcome, I'm not that knowledgeable when it comes to computers.

A. Look for all of the dell mini 9 XP drivers and save them to either a disc or flash drive.

Dell Mini 9 XP drivers -
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&ServiceTag=&SystemID=INSPIRON910&os=WW1&osl=en&catid=&impid=

Next get an external optical drive (cd drive) and purchase an XP disc.

Windows XP $94.99
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2552182&CatId=672

Boot from the XP disc and then follow the instructions on the screen.

Once XP is up an running make sure you install all the drivers.

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What is wrong with Ubuntu?