Can anyone post a link of a site that sells laptops with a CD burner?  Any listings are greatly appreciated.  Thank you dearly.?

Darrenforster99

Has the right idea. I use an Alienware laptop and needing a Blue Ray DVD player/writer, I installed 5 1/4 drive in an OWC Mercury Pro enclosure. It has worked out great and when I upgrade to a new laptop in 2 or 3 years, it'll transfer over.  

You can pick up an old 5 1/4 CD player/writer, for cheap from a thrift store.

If you do a google search for laptops with cd burners, you will see several websites selling new ones. Yes, they're still available.

I bought a mid 2010 MacBook, (white polycarbonate) and it has a burner. I upgraded the ram to 8 gigs and it runs like a top. I might even through in a SSD for faster performance. You can buy them on ebay for 100-150$

If you go to tier1online.com they quite often have refurbished laptops with CD/DVD burners on them.

Another alternative is to look for a 5 1/4" external drive case and fit an internal burner into it - this does have a number of advantages - firstly 5 1/4 optical drives are usually of much better quality and last much longer than the laptop drives - especially brands like Pioneer and Plextor (if you can still find any Plextor drives and someone willing to part with one!), and secondly you can pick what type of burner you put in there - so you could even go all the way up to a Blu-Ray burner, also should anything go wrong with the 5 1/4 drive in an enclosure it's easy enough to remove and replace.  5 1/4" enclosures can be quite difficult to find now though but you can also use some external plug-in boxes that have no enclosures - just make sure they are externally powered rather than trying to take the power from the USB as there isn't enough power in the USB to run a DVD burner).

I agree with the other folks here.  Just buy a cheap USB DVD drive that can burn new CDs and DVDs. 

But if you have to have a laptop with a CD burner, I recommend going on ebay or craigslist, and just find any inexpensive used laptop with a DVD drive in it where they say it works.  You can probably find a 10 year old one for under $100 that will burn a DVD or CD just fine still

Buy an external USB DVD drive for $20.

You just buy a USB CD\DVD for $25 on amazon.

I am not aware of anyone who has included CD/DVD burners in laptops for about the last 5 to 6 years.  Thanks to Apple and their shrinking the size of laptops with the MAC Air no one has included them since.  They would have to make the laptop case larger and heavier to be able to hold it.

But you can buy a USB CD/DVD drive that plugs into the laptop for around $30 that work just as well as an internal one.  And will probably be cheaper than what you would pay to have them produce a larger laptop with a build in CD drive.  

A cheaper option would be to buy a external DVD burner (they also burn CDs) that plugs into a USB socket on the laptop. They are not expensive and do everything a built-in drive would do. In the UK, expect to spend about £22 (around $30 US) or less if bought on-line.

I agree it is a nuisance that new laptops have such limited functionality and connectivity but that must be what most users want. It is not what I want so I try to keep my old computer running for as long as possible.