CD Burner

http://www.epinions.com ?

I haven’t heard many complaints about specific CD-RW hardware devices. Most people seem more concerned with their CD recording software.

I’ve personally had good success with Acer (Acer never applied to me – but I got it for a supper deal back when they were first coming out) and a HP USB model. Also take a look at ZDNet’s article: http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2448917,00.html

I'll just give it to you straight, Brian. Here's some things you want to look at when buying a CD Burner:

How it Interfaces with your computer - There are four types of interfacing:

SCSI - This is the fastest of the four. While it is fast, it also has the downfalls of being more difficult to install, and it requires an SCSI card that may or may not come with the CD-R/RW that you purchase.

EDIE - Well.. here's a small sampling from a Zdnet Help Section :

Quote:
1) Yes, EIDE CDR drives are a lot cheaper than SCSI. They are also a lot easier to install into your existing EIDE system, and they don't require a separate SCSI host adapter.

2) EIDE drives do not perform as well as SCSI, as is the case in all IDE vs. SCSI comparisons. You will notice that the EIDE drives don't access as quickly or move data as easily or fast.

3) SCSI drives tie up less of the CPU cycles, since they have thier own dedicated controllers. EIDE drives use a lot of CPU time, and when burning a CD on a EIDE drive don't expect to use your computer for anything else until the disc is done burning.

4) As far as CD to CD copying goes, if your current CD ROM drive is EIDE, then you will only be able to do a CD to CD copy if you get an EIDE CDR drive. If you get a SCSI CDR, then you will have to get a SCSI CD ROM. The reason for this is that both drives have to be on the same channel in order for you to copy CD to CD.

Well.. unless you really don't care about speed.. then don't buy the last two (parralel and USB.)

CNET's a good place to look for reviews.

[Edited by Mike Fisher on Dec. 17, 2000 at 09:02 AM]

HP are really good, the 9001i i believe got great reviews, i have a matsushita and i have no complaints with it, i really think you cant go wrong as long as you stick with the larger companies

I have the HP 8200 series (external) and it has been pretty good...

The EIDE vs SCSI debate has been rendered virtually meaningless by the newest generation of EIDE writers with BurnProof (or similar) technologies. Back in the old days burning a disc on an EIDE drive would indeed eat up all the available clock cycles and make the computer unable to perform other tasks simultaneously without running into the dreaded buffer underrun error. Now, that's a thing of the past. I've got a P3-500 with an EIDE Plextor 12/10/32 that can do 10 different things while a disc is burning without having any problems or burning any coasters. Besides, with a fast drive a disc can burn in 6-7 minutes, so it's not like you need to commit huge resources to it for extended periods of time. Whats really important when choosing a drive isn't the interface, but how effectively it burns discs that can be read in all devices. Home-made burned CDs are a lot more sensitive than store-bought pressed discs when it comes to working on various players. Many drives that can burn at 8X will have those discs be unreadable by a majority of players and you'd need to drop the burning process back to 1X to get usable discs. A 10 minute burning job suddenly becomes an 80 minute burning job under those circumstances. Ouch!

As CD/RW is such a new technology, it's evolving pretty quickly and improving just as quickly. My advice is to spend a little more and get one of the newest generation of drives that burns at 12X or better. They're faster, more reliable, work more effectively with all the best burning software like Feurio and Nero, handle more media types and burn discs that can be read by more players. The important thing is to find a drive/media/software/burn-speed combination that works the best and creates discs that are readable by your player. Just because somebody else uses Brand A drives and Brand B media to get discs to play in Brand C CD players doesn't mean that that combination will work out okay with a Brand D player.

Currently, the drive with the best reputation for speed and burning good discs that work in the majority of players is the Plextor 12X. I've been using mine with Nero software and Kodak Gold Ultima blank discs with flawless results. Burning at 12X I've yet to create a disc that refuses to play in even really old car or portable walkman-type CD players noted for not handling burned media very well. Also look into the newest Yamaha and TDK drives as they have good reps too. The 12/10/32 units from TDK and Creative Labs are just rebadged Plextor drives, so if you settle on a drive in that class, shop by price rather than brand name. Sony drives have a terrible rep, so you might want to avoid those. For software, try Nero or Feurio, they're rated as being the best. Stay away from Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.x. For media it gets tricky. Few companies make their own media, they just buy cheap blanks from some lesser name manufacturer and stick it in their own packaging. So you never know what you might get. A brand that's decent today might suck tomorrow if they buy a batch of blanks from a different place. I like Kodak and Mitsui (Kodak uses Mitsui technology). They make their own discs and the quality is better than the repackaged stuff. It's also consistent batch to batch. Stay away from BASF, Memorex and TDK media as they have the worst reputations. Surprising, the CompUSA house brand of blanks has a good rep and they're cheap, but I've never tried any of them.

The official CD-R FAQ is at:
http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/

A couple of good newsgroups to check:
comp.publish.cdrom.hardware
comp.publish.cdrom.software

no one mentioned Philips!

as far as I know, they are the only ones with audio CD players that play RWs reliably. So wouldn't that put them in the lead as far as technology?

My bro has a Philips in his machine, my cousin also has a Philips in his. No complants. Just a lot of burnt CDs. lol

Thanks for the responses everybody, that helped a lot!

Brian

My GF gave me a ZipCD650 burner for the holidays. It's USB and requires Win98 but other than that it works good.

Plextor PlexWriter 12x/10x/32x CD-RW

TDK veloCD ReWriter 12x/10x/32x & 24x Audio Rip

Both $250 - best CD Writers.

Thanks everybody,
I just got a HP 9150 at a pretty good price... The only downside is that it burns at 8x instead of 12x, but still for my purposes that will be fast enough, and thus far I'm very happy with it... I've been able to read my CD's on all of the players I've tried, so that's a good sign

What software do you use.

And yes, HP burners are the 2nd best to plextor.

http://www.nero.com

I'm assuming you got some crummy software with it, nero is by far the best burning software out there.

Yeah, I got HP MyCD and Adaptec DirectCD...
It may not be the best software, but it's worked just fine for me so far.

i hgad problems using Adaptec when I wanted to burn CD --> CD and audio CD's, so I now use FireBurn to burn audio CD's.

Gotta love Plextor .

Ravi

From what I have seen HP is one of the worst brands around

We at the local computer shop are relpacing them all the time, i dont know about u guys but I wouldnt even touch anything HP with a 10 foot pole.

agreed, just the experience I had with one of their printers totally turned me off of the HP line.

Ravi

What is wrong with HP? I have both a HP printer and a CD-RW, plus our old computer was a HP. While it isn't the best, it is certaintly solid and everything I have ever gotten from them as been good. Explain...

Ya, so far HP's burners have satisfied me far beyond what I expected.

I've had an hp 7200i CD-Writer Plus for 2 years, and with well over 1000 burns in one year, I'd say it is quite the burner, and it still keeps on going.

it's only 2x, but I use it quite often cuz it's in my old computer, and I've got both of mine networked.

HP is a good brand. At least mine was and I hope yours satisfies you greatly.

I still dont like them over 30% of computers we fix ar HP's
They are usualy underperform greatly and are made very cheaply, on some models not even including a Processor fan, relpacing it with a huge heat sink and a large case fan. , Not good in my books, and they usualy use the slowest hard drives around, ie Quantium Bigfoot, (For those not up in computers Quantium bigfoot are very prone to failing and underperforming). As for there printers, crap quality my cheap epson 440 can do way better quallity from all the printers we service there is no comparsion at the low end of the range compared to epson.

Just my 2 cents

As far as printers go, I have an epson too, and I'm not complaining.

I don't know about HP computers either, I am using a dell... but I do know that if their other products are pieces of , at least they do produce a pretty solid burner- from what I've seen so far

Brian

I’ve never seen bad reviews of HP printers or have I ever had a bad experience with them. You’ve just got to invest a few hundred dollars on decent printer - no matter what the brand.