Absolute Beginners Guide to Upgrading and Fixing Your PC

Beyond the CD-ROM is the new DVD medium. DVDs can contain 4.7GB or more data (compared to 650MB 700MB for a typical CD-ROM), and therefore are ideally suited for large applications or games that otherwise would require multiple CDs. Similar to standard CD-ROMs, most DVDs are read-only although all DVD drives can also read CD-ROM discs. In addition, most DVD drives play full-length DVD movies, which turns your PC into a mini movie machine.

And, just as there are recordable CD-ROM drives, you can also find recordable DVD drives. These DVD-R drives are a little pricey, but costs are coming down and they let you record an entire movie on a single disc.