Good grief, man, what ancient version are you using? Here is a list of output options. Like any mainline editor these days you have a boatload of choices.

So...what ancient version? I use an old PD12 in 32 bit to access lossless avi codecs, so you might want to consider keeping the old as well as progressing to the new. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

Thanks very much for this but as a not very techie, techie, I'm not sure that it answers my question? Part of my reason for using PD is to provide other people with short (30-40 mins) videos which I currently do via DVD. With my ancient PD version and steam driven laptop, this is easy. I can then "produce" and archive the films for myself and store them on an external drive.

If my new laptop doesn't have a disc drive, my question is - how do I use the new version of PD to achieve the same thing? The people I produce the DVD's for currently are not necessarily "friends" where I can share the film on Facebook or whatever ? Is the only option via Youtube? Not sure that would suit some of my "customers" as they prefer to watch on a TV and not all have the facility to connect TV to internet ?

As an extra thought - would PD17 work with an external disc drive ie., does it still have the facility to export to a disc?
Thanks.

Quote As an extra thought - would PD17 work with an external disc drive ie., does it still have the facility to export to a disc?
Thanks.

Yes, you can add an external disc drive.
You can also export to all the formats that today's TVs play via thumbdrive. For sharing, other than Youtube or some other service, you might consider a free DropBox account and share the actual files for downloading by people that do NOT necessarily have a DropBox account. Of course DB is not the only cloud service, just an example. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

Great, thanks for your help.