The sale of many optical drive-less notebooks and netbooks have driven up demand for external slim-line drives and it seems like the Taiwanese manufacturers of said devices are expecting the demand to further increase during next year.

We're not sure that the boost in sale of drive-less notebooks and netbooks will drive a huge increase in sales of optical drives, as most people are happy to live without the drive. The only problem that might occur is when you have to re-install the operating system or want to install some applications that can only be installed from a disc.

As slim-line drives are often much slower than their desktop counterparts, going for a desktop drive in an external enclosure will give you better drive performance, both for read and write operations. So unless you need to be able to bring your optical drive with you when you travel, it's better to get the bulkier desktop drive in an enclosure for home use as long as you have the space for it.

However, with an ever growing market share for drive-less notebooks and netbooks we can see that there'll be an increased demand for external optical drives, but how big it will be is a different matter all together.

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