Netbook

Today is THE day I pick up my netbook. It's going to be interesting, since I was toying with this idea months ago but my colleagues seem to think that it won't be of much use because it's too small to comfortably work on although I could then lug it around - it's far lighter for a person who doesn't drive.
Anyways, things always have an opportunity cost tagged to it. In the case of the netbook, it's not having a DVD-ROM drive. I haven't figured out how I'm going to load my MS Office yet, although there's a high possibility that I'll buy an external unit to do the job. A netbook is useless to me, if I'm not able to work on MS Office - BUT let's see, i'm sure there's a way to do all the word docs and spreadsheets online - like in gmail docs.

I refuse to cave-in and say the netbook is useless since, unless you have actually lugged a notebook around using public transportation. I almost lost my handbag in BKK because of the heavy notebook this year and I won't have a repeat performance here either, because I may not be so lucky.

If it's really 'useless', then manufacturers won't be coming up with smaller and lighter ones - so there must be some way to get over the absence of a DVD-ROM drive. I'll use it as it is for a couple of days first and then decide if it's necessary to add-on.