Nuances of the Baby-DVD

The Baby DVD drive comes with a 14" long cable adapter to bring it to the PCMCIA port. The manual for the drive advises that it only be used in the horizonal position - much like an internal CDROM. Titling the drive while its spinning (it spins at a high RPM) can cause the edge of the disk to make contact with the tray, and if bumped suddenly or turned on its edge too quickly the drive may skip. I only mention this as I was moving the test laptop in one instance, and picked up the drive at an odd angle and noticed these little quirks.  With out the stabilizing factor of being imbedded in a dense computer, it may suffer some performance drops on excessively bumpy planes, trains or automobiles.

By the drives very nature it's hard not to want to treat it with the same abandonment as a portable CD-player, which of course it isn't designed to emulate. Portable CD players operate at significantly lower spindle speeds and are designed to take some abuse, lots of bumps and the like. The Baby DVD takes existing internal drive technology and adapts it for use as a selfstanding device.

Considering the size and material constraints of most laptop peripherals, Amacom has managed to transform a precise device into a fairly robust portable product, while keeping performance and ease of use to that "just out of the box never read the instructions watching a movie already" performance we all strive for.

That is the real test of a good product, and Amacom has got it right with the Baby DVD. Speed freaks may look at the 5X DVD and gawk, but where portability comes into play, there not other options we are aware of. In the end it's simple, user friendly, intuitive, and gives good performance for a portable DVD drive.