dvd-rewriteable drives

For the price, you can't beat it. I really could care less about the speed. I just want dependability, and this inboard unit delivers. Easy to install, just take the face off your pc, slide it in, plug in the IDE and power, two screws, and that's it. (...)

Got this burner on Friday and I have to say I am quite pleased. I already had Nero Ultra, so there was need for the OEM version (they finally put almost all the former "extras"--excepting unlimited MP3 creation--like Dolby encoding (little things like that) that used to double the price. So I can't give any comment on the Nero version so included.

but the burner is solid. No coasters (knock on wood) of either kind. It installed easily. XP recognized it instantly without any "reactivation" required. (I've heard people complain about this but it's never happened to me and this VAIO is six months old.) True Plug n' Play. Something Apple still has trouble with. My VAIO has grey covers which fit over both 5 3/4" slots so the bezel color is irrelevant to me (but I can see if you've got a beige box how it would clash).

As for some of the complaints mentioned, including Joe Turner, I haven't noticed any problems as he has. The burner readily ids any disc (CD or Dvd-x) and displays its name in My Computer. I am running a P4 2.8 dual proc so that might have something do with it. If you're system is older or perhaps you don't have DMA activated, it might take longer for the disk info to hit the processor. In other words, if you're machine is PII 450 with 256MB of 133 SDRAM, yeah, NERO is gonna run slow and the buffering is going to slow everything else down. With dual 2.8 GHz processor cores (the P4 HT), it ain't a problem.

As for the "pokey" speeds for CD writing, I coped, using CDClone, an entire CD (Rush's "Power Windows" which I bought, egads, almost twenty years ago, but it was starting to show "eaten" away spots...so much for CDs lasting a century!), drive to drive (the Vaio came with a Pioneer 106D, which while on the slow side itself, I moved down to slot 2, replacing the ASUS CD-ROM drive the 'puter came with) is less than 4 minutes. I don't know why anyone would need to burn an entire CD in less than for minutes. Maybe there's somebody, but I can't see any real difference.

Other than, the drive works great and I would reccommend it to anyone. I haven't had the chance to get any 8x DVD media. I'd already bought a large quantity of DVD+Rs 4X's and those have to be used before I buy the 8x discs. Besides, they are little pricey right now; too pricey just to be able to say, "Hey I backed up a whole movie in 7 minutes, cool, hunh?"

Sure the new Sony I saw the shelves at Fry's will burn CDs at 40x speed. But in my book that ain't worth the extra hundred the Sony will cost you. Plus word of mouth on Sony optical drives--in my years in the industry--not very good and the reviews here on Amazon seem to indicate it hasn't got much better.

But if you're looking for a solid drive, good burning software (that having been said, if you've already got a good burning package that you're comfortable with, I'd leave it alone; Nero includes a lot of stuff that, while not exactly 'bloatware' in the classic Micro$oftian sense, isn't really useful to the average consumer who wants to burn movies of the grandkids, make perfectly legal--see 321 decision by Judge Susan Illston--backup copies of DVDs you own; but if you are into authoring your own DVDs or Divx (Can TVs display MPEG-4 video straight from the video card?), then it's got everything you need; also, it's burning engine is excellent and is required if you want DVDShrink to burn the discs it transcodes for you) and don't need the fatest car on the block--so to speak--then this solid optical drive's features and price point make it a good choice.

I deduct only one star for the inclusion of a stripped down version of Nero instead of the Ultra Package; or, failing that, an upgrade coupon for the "maxi-big" version, to quote Jar-Jar Binks. Odd that Ahead or Memorex would miss the "upsale" opportunity. In any event, A-.

I searched and searched for a burner that would fit my budget and also have some of the bells and whistles I wanted in a DVD Burner. As far as $$$ goes this thing is a great deal, at this time I don't think you can find a better deal on a Multi-format name brand DVD Burner.

I use it in conjuction with DVD Xcopy (non rf version) and DVD Shrink and it works great. I only have two complaints

1) Slow CD Writing Speeds 24X
2) Only comes in black so it doensn't match my Beige PC case.

Problem #1 is easy enough to fix. For a small price around $50 you can pick up a 52X CD Burner DVD player combo. This will allow you to have a fast CD Burner on your system and a DVD player so you won't have to switch out the DVD your copying. You can just put the DVD in one drive and the Blank in your burner and walk away. No need to watch and wait then switch.

Also works well with all DVD-R Media I've used. Memorex 4X disks, Imation 2X Disks and Verbatim Digital Movie 4X Disks.