News.com discusses upcoming DVD-R enabled laptops coming from Sony and Toshiba.
Due to Apple's Titanium Powerbook using a slot-loaded drive, implementing a DVD-R in the Powerbook will take more time:
- Greg Joswiak, senior director of Apple's worldwide hardware product marketing, could not estimate when DVD recording drives would be available on the PowerBook.
"We'll offer them as soon as the slot-loading drives are available," he said.
A minor revision to the Powerbooks are expected soon, with November 5th being the most likely date. Reports included speed bumps up to 1GHz and there has been some debate about internal vs external superdrive additions. Based on this article, it appears an internal Superdrive is not yet available.
Update: Titanium.X links to this ZDNet article (Japanese) which reports that Panasonic has announced a slot-loading DVD-R drive.