You know, when Apple announced its new and improved PowerBooks last month and revealed our original prediction to be spookily accurate (DVD-ROM or CD-RW drives, but no combo option), we furrowed our collective brow in concern. We knew that lots of people had been holding off on going titanium in hopes that a second-revision model would let them watch the director's cut of Little Nicky and then burn a mix CD of favorite high school marching band hits, all while in the air between Timbuktu and Tuscaloosa. So when faced with an "either/or" instead of an "and," we just assumed that most customers would pass over the CD-RW option in favor of movies, movies, movies.

Heck, it seemed logical to us: if you want a PowerBook, you're probably mobile. While you're mobile, you're far more likely to want to be entertained than to sit on the bus burning a set of backups. Burning CDs seemed more like a "sit at home" activity to us, for which a USB or FireWire CD-RW drive seems like a perfect solution. Who would pay $100 extra at the Apple Store to lose DVD compatibility in favor of an internal CD-RW drive, when the cheapest external burners don't cost much more than that? Besides, it's a lot cheaper and easier to add an external CD burner than an external DVD drive. To us, the choice is obvious.

However, it appears we grossly overestimated the appeal of movies on the run among the general populace, because people are forking over an extra C-note to order their PowerBooks with CD-RW instead of DVD-ROM. In fact, so many of them have done so, Think Secret reports that Apple had to put up the "SOLD OUT" sign; if you wander over to the Apple Store and try to order a PowerBook with the internal burner, you'll find yourself staring at a page telling you that the CD-RW Slot Load Drive is "Temporarily Unavailable." According to Think Secret, Apple can't take any more orders for CD-RW PowerBooks because of short supplies due to "overwhelming demand." (If you were hoping to custom-order one of those bad boys, you're going to have to wait a while.)

So the masses have spoken: for an "overwhelming" number of customers, being able to burn CDs while on the move is worth an extra hundred clams, and the loss of having a portable DVD player is of no consequence. Personally, we'll never understand that attitude, especially in light of the fact that the first season of Buffy is coming to DVD in less than two months. Then again, without knowing how many slot-loading CD-RW drives Apple had on hand in the first place, we suppose "overwhelming demand" is a pretty relative term; for all we know, Apple was "overwhelmed" with eight orders when they only stocked six drives. After all, everyone loves movies. Right? Right?