well its that tiem again to get a new cd burner.. right now i currently have a yahmaha 16x drive and its total crap.. i had a plextor 8x before this and i loved it.. im thinking about going plextor again anyone have any suggestions?

I love my Plextor (only 16X; newest are "32X", which works out to around 24X in real life), but it's not the best with imperfect audio source discs.. my ancient AOpen 4X rips low quality discs (most of the cheaper classical music I have around here) more reliably.

Cheers

accully i was looking at the site it says there a 40x out now ::sigh:: i know i cant burn that fast.. i think thats what im going to go for..

Yeah. 40X. Right. Maybe saves 20sec/CD over the 32X model.

These things work on a "zone" basis, using 16X for maybe the first 1/3 of the disc, then 20X,24X,28X,32X,36X,40X (two or three of those) on the remaining fractional portions ("zones"). Average real-life speed oughta be in the 20s. The 16X burners use 16X for the entire disc.

Cheers

Supposedly the new Plex 32x (with an imediate upgrade of the firmware to the latest available from Plextor's website) is a great drive. AND, I read somewhere that it defeated every copy protected CD that one test threw at it!!!

Here are the burners that I have owned:

• JVC 2x SCSI (junk)
• HP 2x SCSI (excellent)
• Teac 4x SCSI (good)
• Plextor 8x SCSI (excellent)
• Lite On 16x10x40 IDE (excellent)

Based on my past experience with those burners, and ones I didn't own, I tend to stay true to what works. Plextor and Lite On are fabulous drives. But, Lite On drives are mad cheap. Seeing as how I don't keep hardware for more than a year, I would buy Lite On because they perform well and are usually half price of Plextor. I have sold 4 computers with Lite On burners, told 2 friends to buy them, and bought one for my office. So far, they're all still kicking with no complaints. Just my $.02.

Here, only $95 for 32X Lite On:
Link to New Egg

www.cdrinfo.com has a lot of good information.

I've been tempted to replace my 16x because they are so damn cheap now. But it's pretty hard to get excited about reducing the time to burn a cd by 2 minutes.

-Dylan

/me stares at his 4x...

I'm going to hold out though and grab a DVD player/CD Burner for my next system, since I am going microATX and want a small case with 1 5.25 drive bay.

Big cases suck for lan parties, and considering my monitor right now is less heavy then my computer tower...

Damn, I was just going to say that I still use the 4x that's in server in the other room until I realized that my new laptop has some sort of burner in it. I think it's an 8x, but I havn't used the burner once, seeing as I got my empeg the same week as the laptop.

Really though, upgrading cd-writers has always seemed like a waste as long as the one you have doesn't make coasters. I guess that would change if I averaged more than two CDs a week, but most people don't burn hundreds of CDs.

Matthew

i burn quite a few.. not music cds but various other ones that i dont plan on mentions in fear of getting flamed.. msuic is next to pointless other than buring for girlfriend and various other people .. and the one i have now makes more coasters than i wish it did.. it was advertised with burn-proof but i cant for the life of me get that to work in any softwre program.. i guess it really dosnt have it

This site has some interesting comparisons on writer capabilities, albeit for their own product.

http://www.elby.org/CloneCD/english/index.htm

I still use my trusty Mitsumi 4804TE @ 4 X. Don't care if it takes longer than newer models. All my burns are good. Besides If you can't go away and leave the PC for 15 mins or so then you need therapy

i currently have a lite on 40x writer, i bought it in janurary for $130, but they have gone down to around $115. Wait a month or so and they will be under $100. Works great with Nero and CDRWin (the only two programs i use to make CDs) The drive is a little loud, or louder then my last 24x lite-on writer, when burning CDs, and I haven't made a coaster yet. I used to have a Yamaha 16X, but when I burn at 16x on good media, it wouldn't get recognized on my Rio Volt CD/mp3 player. The liteon's work at top speed. Someone told me it had to do with the laser intensity.

I noticed that I can't do as much multi-tasking like i used to because everything else just slows down, ie scrolling down a two page paper takes like 10 seconds. I would guess the software program has set the CPU utilization on high. No complaints.

Back in the old skool days before they had 8x writers, I would only get SCSI. But the advancments of IDE have started to shine for many workstations and now I am picking the IDE drives to save money.

http://www4.tomshardware.com/storage/01q4/011213/index.html

Whatever applies to these *probably is* true for the faster versions from the same companies.

"If you can't go away and leave the PC for 15 mins or so then you need therapy"

I need some major help then :-/ its hard for me to leave this machine for 15min toher than to get food or go to work..

FYI, buy.com has the 12/10/32 Plextor for $98.95. Then, there's a $30 rebate on top of that, bringing it to $68.95.

http://www.us.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10252769