I'm looking for an external DVD burner that is USB powered and as small and light as possible to work with my MacBook Air.
Also needs to be compatible with a Dell netbook.

The Apple super drive has a lot of limitations as far as compatibility is concerned, even with some Macs.
It's also pretty pricey.

Came across this SAMSUNG USB 2.0 External Slim Portable Blu-ray Writer Model SE-506AB/TSBD which isn't much more than the Apple DVD burner but does Blu-ray burning as well and is Mac compatible with some additional software.
Sounds like the way to go - any comments or other suggestions?

I put my superdrive in an external USB shell and it works pretty well for reading DVD's etc. I have noticed though that burning sometimes gives it issues and I suspect it is the lack of power. If I were looking for an external to burn with I'd like one that could also use a external power supply.

I use Thatcher Samsung writer on my Macs with no problems at all. It works well for burning as well as archiving Blu-Ray movies with MakeMKV and Handbrake/VideoMonkey.

What limitations does the Apple one have? I have the apple one, its nice, small and powered through USB. Is there things it wont? It writes DL no problem.

What limitations does the Apple one have?

From what I have read, the Apple one is severely limited as to the models of Macs it will work with.
Apparently Apple has built restrictions into the firmware so that it will only work with a small number of Macs and certainly not with any Windows machines.

After starting to do some research on what to buy, turns out I needed one quickly last week so I went to Future Shop to see what they had - turns out nothing, they were only getting more in August, then went to Staples and picked up a very compact Asus simply because it was advertised as Mac compatible and it was in stock.

Turns out that so far the Asus drive does everything I want.
Small, light and compact.
USB powered; Came with a Y-cable but on all the Macs I tried it so far only one USB port is required to power it.
Haven't burned anything yet, but reading CDs and DVDs works very well and fast.
Also tried it with a Dell notebook, that works fine also.