I recently purchased a Vaio VGN-S58P laptop which is an excellent piece of hardware except for the above drive which has rendered the whole unit useless since it is hardware region coded. Obviouslz I cannot travel with it so either I replace the DVD drive or just leave it on the shelf. The added problem is that this drive is 9.5mm and there aren't that many replacements.

I previously replaced 2 other laptops with Toshiba SD-R6472 which works magnificently, though it is 12.5mm.

My question is to anyone who has an HP PA581A laptop DVD 9.5mm drive and whether it works with AnyDVD? It is an expensive drive and I don't want to buy it if it has a similar problem to the Matshitty.

Thanks in advance