Hi there,
Yes you can buy any external dvd writer and it will work just fine. You will need a firewire or USB2 enclosure (I recommend firewire). This adds another $30-$40 to your DVD writer price.
Mac has finder burning built in, much like XP - so you can drag files from the desktop or folders onto the blank DVD icon, and when you eject it it will confirm if you are ready to burn.
I still recommend using Toast from Roxio, very nice software, and allows you to burn "PC" disks too ;)
As far as the OS X interface is concerned - I use both on a dialy basis and I am little of a mac guy - so I'll say OSX is better. But it does feel less flaky and more solid than XP (to me) especially under load. XP has some nice features too, although none come to mind right now... I'll have to get back to you ;)
Better than a Pentium M? hmmmm, I dunno about that one - the G4 is a solid performer, I would say more on the value end of the Pentium M line it would be quite similar - but hey, it's a value laptop.
I would suggest to you that if performance is an issue, buy as much RAM as you can possibly afford. Definately. Get a 512 at least!
The battery - I had an old iBook 800, and I'd get a good 3 hours with the laptop screen at full brightness and playing DVD's... You could make it last around 5 or more if you are conservative with screen backlighting and optical drive use...
Whew!
Ok, and finally - Boch is HIDDEOUSLY SLOW, do your self a favour, save the frustration and get Vitrual PC - with enough RAM and all of the goodies turned off in Win XP (smoothtype etc.) it's actually useable for office/prodoctivity apps.
Cheers,
Hope this helps!
Mike
