Travel Technology - Portable optical drive or hard drive for watching movies?

I am not a techie, so bear with me. Bought Mrs DD a Dell Mini-12 for her travels. It's the 80G model. I'm wondering which is better for her to watch movies, a portable optical drive or a portable hard drive like a Western Digital Essential or something like that. Anyone have experience using either of these things?

Is the 80G internal drive not big enough? (or did you mean 8GB?)

Is the 80G internal drive not big enough? (or did you mean 8GB?)

Well, yeah...I think you could probably get five or six movies on there. She plans on putting some games and stuff on it, too, so maybe I'm overplanning this....:o

You can turn DVDs into good quality compact files, ca. 700-1000MB. Then, you can put them on the harddrive, an SD card, or USB stick.

You can turn DVDs into good quality compact files, ca. 700-1000MB. Then, you can put them on the harddrive, an SD card, or USB stick.

I told you I'm dense. How can I do that? Thanks!

Fair Use Wizard is one such tool.
http://www.fairusewizard.com/lang_en/fairuse_wizard_dvd_divx_xvid_backup_tool_light_edi tion.html

There are a number.