Ultrabay

OK, I was trying to avoid asking this, but what the frickin' heck is an ultrabay?
The model I like comes with this:
" Optical device
8x Max DVD Recordable EIDE Ultrabay Enhanced Drive (Standard)"

It also has the option of this:
" Ultrabay enhanced options
ThinkPad Multi-Burner Plus Ultrabay Enhanced Drive [$224.10]"

If I want to use the ultrabay battery (which, if I understand correctly, is not actually a battery, but supplies a limited battery recharge), can I do so in conjunction with the standard DVD burner?

I really don't get it, the absence of any half-decent explanation on the Web site is really starting to burn me up. Remember the scene in Zoolander where they were trying to get the information out of the computer? Yeah...

Thanks,
Howie

 

Ultrabay is simply the term IBM uses for the bay the optical drive slips into. You can hot swap components in and out of there. So it's upgradeable and you can use the bay for a secondary hard drive (you need a special ultrabay hard drive sled that costs around $50 and then a hard drive fits in that), you can use it for an extra slim style battery (I've actually never used it for this, but you might be right that it just uses this slim battery to charge the main battery, not sure) or of course for using an upgraded optical drive, so if you have just a CD-RW you could buy a Super-multi DVD burner and pull out the CD-RW with ease. And best of all, you don't need to reboot the machine as you swap stuff in and out, Windows will just pop up a "Found new Hardware" notification, and away you go.

 

Ah, I get it. Technically, there is no dedicated optical bay. Is there any difference between the 8x DVD Recordable and the Multi-burner Plus?

 

The 8x recorder is for the R and Z series. The Multi-Burner Plus is for the T series. They only burn ar 2x.