Really stupid question

Can I watch DVD's on my laptop? Do I need to download a program if I can?

Without knowing anything about your laptop the short answer should be, if you have a DVD drive, Yes. (Check that it's not just a CD-Rom drive - they have different logo's on the disc loading gate.)

You should have some software pre-loaded that will start DVD's when they are put in. Something like PowerDVD...

If you put a DVD in the drive and nothing happens you can try to open the DVD program from your programs directory.

If there's nothing there, or nothing obvious, you can download lots of free DVD players. I'd recommend something like VLC player, which is a great, free multimedia player, but there are many other options.

Good luck.

*Usually* they will automatically play in WMP, not always. There are free programs online if you do have probs playing as an alternate player, I have AVS4YOU, and Real Player.

I don't think that is a stupid question!

Have a look on the actual disk drawer thingo. If it says DVD, you should be right.

I'm no techie, but I guess that's the layman's answer.

depending on which operating system you are using you will probably have to download the 'codecs' for playing the dvds on your computer. One good thing about a legitamate version of vista - it already comes with them but if you are using xp or others you will probably have to. They are easily available and you can find them for free so you dont hve to download the pay for ones. 

*wow, i impress myself, i can actually answer a tech question. (at least until someone shows me I am wrong.)

You have Vista, right?

I have no idea how Vista tells you what hardware you have, but on XP, it's like this:

Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device manager > DVD/CD-ROM drives

That'll tell you what your drink holder actually is.  For my desktop, it says "BENQ DVD-ROM 16X"


But for my desktop, using Win XP, I still had to install a codec before Windows Media Player would play a dvd in the drive.  "K-Lite Mega Codec Pack" does the trick, as does switching to VLC Media Player.  (And I still haven't tested the laptop drive, so I dunno for that.)

It works. I just put the DVD in and with no problem, it played. I didn't want to try it before I asked in case I would damage something if you weren't supposed to.

Thanks

Something to bear in mind is that laptop computer DVD drives are highly miniturized, and therefore less robust than regular DVD players. Watching a lot of DVDs will thrash the drive, and you could end up with it breaking down long before the end of the life of the rest of the computer. Not a total disaster - you can buy a separate DVD drive which you can just plug into a USB port. But in general I'd recommend watching DVDs on your laptop occasionally rather than every evening.