Asus announced a netbook that includes an integral optical disk drive. The Eee PC 1004DN (left) has an Intel Atom N280 processor, a 10-inch display, a 120GB hard disk drive, up to 2GB of RAM, and weighs 3.19 pounds with a six-cell battery.
At 10.9 x 7.55 x 1.33 inches, the PC 1004DN isn't the smallest computer to include an integrated optical drive but we believe that honor may go to the Kohjinsha SR8KPO6S pictured at right, which measures 9.2 x 7 x 1.3 inches and includes a touchscreen that folds into tablet mode. However, the PC 1004DN is the first such device in Asus's Eee netbook line, according to the company.
The optical drive would certainly come in handy for easy loading of Linux distributions on the netbook. The company did not detail operating system support, but the Atom-based system should support both Linux and Windows for this netbook.
Asus says the PC 1004DN's optical drive reads and writes data from and to standard CD/DVD media, allowing movie playback, data backup, and software installation. At the same time, the netbook battery, packing six cells for a total of 5200mAh, provides up to five hours of operation, it's claimed.
In another novel move, the PC 1004DN incorporates not only Intel's 1.66GHz Atom N280 CPU, but also the chipmaker's GN40 northbridge/southbridge combination. Earlier N280 netbooks, the Asus PC1000HE and the PC 1008HA, have apparently used Intel's 945GSE (945GCSE northbridge and 82801GBM southbridge), which typically accompanies the chipmaker's earlier Atom N270.
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