i think being able to read all dvd formats would be nice. i could really care less about burning anything. in todays world why do you really need to burn discs at all?
1980's to mid 90's - i made tapes vhs for movies and cassettes for audio (ahh those were the days)
mid 90's to early 2000's - i made dvd's and cd's
today and on - i watch movies on my computer (connected to large lcd tv) and music is all mp3 players
in the year and a half i have had this macbook i think i may have put a cd or dvd in it less than 10 x's
i used my home imac to rip all my dvd's a long time ago and sold them all back to a second hand store and and now 99.9% of everything i need i get via the web whether it is music, movies, or software.
having at least one cd/dvd/blueray drive on your system to me is plenty and to be honest i would prefer to have no cd/dvd/blueray drive at all on my portable mac's and have that weight and space used for memory, hdd space, or better performing processors.
the mac air i believe is the right idea, you can either have an external drive or use an existing one from a stationary home machine. unfortunately for me they are waaaayyyy too far of the mark with hdd space on the air for it to be a usefull machine for me.
to me disc's of any kind are becoming more and more like cassettes were in the 90's and i am not missing them at all.
i guess if you didnt have apple tv or a 360 or a ps3 or a video out cable for your ipod, or any of the many other movie viewing options for your tv then you would need to have a dvd player to watch something but if that were the case you are probably not reading and posting here and dont really care about any of this talk anyway.