Samsung Electronics, a maker of consumer devices and a supporter of the Blu-ray disk (BD) format, is quietly selling laptops with HD DVD optical drives on its domestic market. Samsung Electronics was the first company to announce the intention to produce a Blu-Ray and HD DVD hybrid player but decided to drop the idea in late November, without disclosing the reasons. By selling personal computers with HD DVD, Samsung shows its priorities lie with short-term business gains rather than the promotion of Blu-ray.
Additionally, it means that the demand for HD DVD-equipped notebooks is pretty strong in South Korea. Samsung M55 notebooks feature a 17" screen with a 1920x1200 resolution, up to 2GB of memory, 120GB Serial ATA HDD, Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB GPU, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth support and so on. The system with HD DVD a read only memory (ROM) drive is powered by an Intel Core Duo T2500 processor, whereas the more advanced Samsung M55 (€2430 or $3185) with an HD DVD burner features an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 CPU.