Tech: CD burners

Subject: BS: Cd burners
From: kendall
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 10:08 PM

I know this has been covered but I can't bring it up.
Question, I'm in the market for a good cd burner. Suggestions?

Subject: RE: Tech: CD burners
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 10:25 PM

Hi, Kendall - I take it you're looking for one for a computer? I got a Cendyne CD burner for cheap and was very satisfied. I think they cost about fifty bucks at the office supply stores if you watch the ads.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Tech: CD burners
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 11:41 PM

I would recommend that you not go simply by price. Look for a burner with some form of the "burn-proof" or "buffer underrun protection" technology. You produce fewer coasters that way. I have a Plextor PlexWriter that I bought a few years ago that I've been quite happy with. Wasn't the cheapest burner at the time but well worth the premium I paid.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD burners
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 11:43 PM

Another thought.

If I were in the market for a CD burner today, I'd look seriously at the external drives which plug into a USB port. That way I could also use it with my laptop. Also much easier to replace when the time comes.

Subject: RE: Tech: CD burners
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 02:11 AM

One hazard with the external burners: Both your computer and the burner need to use USB-2, or you're limited to rather slow burn rates. If either is to the older USB spec, about 8x (real) or 12x (specsmanship) is the best you'll get. With USB-2 on both ends of the wire, you can go about as fast as the internals.

There are also quite a few reasonably priced "DVD R/RW" units on the market that will let you burn either CDs or DVDs, but there's a little pain with the pill. Since the DVD writes the dots a lot closer together than a CD burner, the spindle speed is usually limited to the speed at which the laser can keep up with a DVD burn, so a lot of the "really fast" DVD R/RW burners burn CDs at rather slow - 8x to 12x speeds.

Also note that not all DVD burners can burn CDs - you've got to look for the "R/RW" and the "Compact Disk ReWritable" logo (trademarked) on the front panel. If you're mainly going to use only CDs, and want the best burn speeds, you're probably still better off with a plain old CD-R/RW burner - forget the DVD stuff.

If you have a whole lot of very large files - as in a lot of hi-res photos and such, you can burn a "data DVD" with up to about 4GB on it, so it's tempting to go that way. At present, I only have one machine that can read DVD, so I've stayed with the 700MB I can cram onto a data CD.

The bundled software usually has about as much to do with how many coasters you'll make as the hardware, but almost all the "common" burners come with Nero or EasyCD. Nero (ROM Burning) seems a little more stupid proof for audio CDs, but I much prefer EasyCD for data CDs. They're different enough that I put both on my current machine, for the different usages.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: CD burners
From: mooman
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 03:54 AM

Good advice from John as always.

I recently bought an external burner for my iMac and have been very pleased with the Lacie model I bought. It looks though it is built to last! This has both USB2 and Firewire (for the Mac).

Best regards,

moo

Subject: RE: Tech: CD burners
From: kendall
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 07:22 AM

Thanks a lot. I have usb 2

Subject: RE: Tech: CD burners
From: treewind
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 09:50 AM

1. Plextor. If anything doesn't work, it's almost certainly not the drive's fault
2. Yamaha used to be a good 2nd best for less money

They nearly all have BURN (buffer under-run) proofing now. The differences between models are things like how compatible they are with different types of media. My Plextor makes reliable CDRs on unbranded media that cost 13p/disk, and has done so with everything else I've thown at it in the past.

Actually this is old-ish advice. It may well be that they all work pretty well now and there's not so much difference.

Anahata

Subject: RE: Tech: CD burners
From: Maryrrf
Date: 26 Jun 03 - 04:15 PM

I had a batch of Memorex CD's I was using and it seemed like the CD burner screwed up all the time. I recently bought a box of Fuji CD's because they were on sale and I haven't had any problems. So I guess all CD's aren't alike, as I had thought.