BenQ announces portable Pocket Writer burners

BenQ has taken the wraps off a new line of portable CD and DVD burners at the Computex trade show in Taipei. The new Pocket Writer burners will play and record 3.2-inch optical discs, as opposed to the usual 4.7-inch ones, making for a more portable unit but smaller storage capacities. A 3.2-inch CD can hold up to 200MB of data, with the DVDs holding 1.4GB.  Three different models will be rolled out over the next year:  the $179 PW100 will be CD-only and launched in September of this year, the $249 PW200 adds DVD burning and should show up in February 2006. The last model, the PW300, will use Blu-ray discs and should come out sometime in the third quarter of next year, but pricing hasn't been determined.