More for your book: Japanese gadget innovator Century is offering a device for putting more muscle into netbooks in the form of its Netbook Stand, the CNBS-WT/ODD. While fundamentally a netbook cooler, the Century gadget also packs in a DVD burner. A fan is built into the left side and swivels up into an unusual vertical position for use. The Netbook Stand also includes space under its lid for an extra 2.5-inch SATA hard drive or solid state drive. A netbook is simply placed on top of the stand and hooked up via a USB cable; the fan is then powered up and the DVD drive is ready for use. It completes the package with two extra USB sockets.
The DVD burner handles all manner of DVDs at speeds of up to 8× and notches a top speed of 24× for CDs. One shortcoming is that it only works with Windows XP and Vista, not the Linux system that many netbooks work on. The 4-cm fan revolves at a respectable 5,000 rpm. The stand measures 260×190×19 mm and weighs 524 grams.
The Century stand is on sale now for ¥9,980.