External drives
External drives--storage and media-burning options that hook up to your notebook via cable--come in many shapes and sizes. Most of these drives connect to your notebook via a USB or FireWire cable. Drive choices include external floppy, CD-ROM, combo DVD/CDRW, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, hard drive, and others. There are also smaller external drives, called thumbdrives, that plug directly into your USB connector sans cable. These little drives are brilliant for transferring small amounts of data between notebooks or between notebooks and PCs, and they're much more convenient than burning data onto CD. Many notebook users don't need external drives, but there are scenarios that require them. For instance, if you buy a tiny ultraportable that lacks a built-in CD-ROM drive, make sure you get an external one so that you can load software.