I've never even heard of a DVD writer. Is it like a regular DVD drive, or is it limited as to what it can do? Thanks, all.
It just means you can also write DVD's, in addition to reading them (which would including watching DVDs). That is to say, you can either burn whole copies of DVD movies, or you can copy data files to a DVD like you would have back in the day with a floppy disk (or, what most people do today, to a USB thumb drive).
DVD writers are standard for almost any computer that has a disc drive at all. I had my first DVD-RW drive probably 15 years ago. I got my first Blu-ray drive for a computer about 10 years ago and more-or-less stopped regularly watching DVDs since then.
Now I'm working on switching over to UHD (4K Blu-rays). I sometimes forget that most people in the world are still okay with just using DVDs.