Spressa 10x/4x/32x CRX145E CDRW
Written: Dec 26 '00 (Updated Dec 26 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent Performance; Features; Stability; Easy to Install & Use; Price
Cons: 4x-RW speed
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| dsmeyer's Full Review: Sony Spressa Professional |
I have used CD-RW drives for a long time. My old drive worked well, but it was too slow for my needs. For this reason, I decided to start looking for a fast burner. Several months ago I saw a CompUSA ad for the Sony Spressa Professional 10x4x32-speed internal EIDE CD-RW drive, at just $199. This new Sony Spressa (model CRX145E) would be nearly 2.5 times as fast for writing CD-R discs as my old Smart & Friendly drive, and was only about $50 more than what I paid for my first burner. I decided $200 was not a bad price at all at the time for this model and was around $50 to $100 cheaper than any competing similar model from another name brand. I immediately got in the car and made a long drive to CompUSA. I can tell you now, I have no regrets about buying this product. It has top-notch performance and reliability for most novices and veteran users.
In CD-RW terms, 10x4x32 is pretty fast nowadays. Most CD-R media you can buy in the store comes on 700 MB (80 minute) discs and is rated for up to 12x writers. I have seen a few drives coming onto the market with 16x write speeds, but these are very expensive, and the 12x writers are just now coming down in price. If you didn't know what 10x4x32 stands for, this just means that the Spressa CRX145E writes CD-R discs at 10x, which is 1500 KB/sec (or about 1.5 MB/sec). It can rewrite at 4x, which is just 600 KB/sec. It reads CD's at a maximum of 32x (2400 KB/sec). There are many burners today with higher than 4x ReWrite speeds, but I have never, ever used a ReWritable disc, as they are more expensive, and just more hassle than using Zip disks. With this drive, you should be able to record a whole 700 MB CD in under 8 minutes.
My first experience with the drive was as expected. I installed the drive in my PC and proceeded to install the software. If your PC is even halfway recent and has an available IDE channel you should have no problems installing this standard ATAPI-compatible drive in your machine. The computer's BIOS detects it on startup, and Windows also recognized the new device when it booted up. If you have installed devices in your computer before then this should be a breeze for you, if not, then you may need to read the Quick Start guide that comes with this product, which is pretty easy to understand.
As a precaution, I decided not to install the software that came with the Spressa Professional CD-RW drive. The software is proprietary and I didn't want to learn something new. I was already familiar with Adaptec's (now known as Roxio) Easy CD Creator, which I already had since I previously used it with my old Smart & Friendly CD-RW drive. I did have to download a patch to upgrade CD Creator to 4.02 so it would recognize model CRX145E, which is the Spressa model I have. Just so you know, however, CD Creator costs about $69 more (after rebate) in case you do not want to use the included software.
Performance with the Sony Spressa Professional is excellent. I have burned probably hundreds of CD's ever since I purchased this drive in the summer. I use it primarily for copying (i.e., backing up) audio and data discs, burning audio CD's, MP3 CD's, as well as movies. Primarily, however, I use it to back up my precious digital data. The only time I have ended up with coasters is when I am maxing out my PC's capabilities while I am burning a CD. For example, I am more at risk of causing a wasted CD-R if I try to play The Sims while burning a CD, or while copying a large amount of data between hard drives during the CD burning process. This is not the drive's fault, it is a problem with buffer underruns. If your computer is not fast enough to provide 1500KB/sec (10x) of data to the Spressa Professional, this will lead to those buffer runderruns. Also, if you are doing a CD-to-CD copy of a disc, your reader may not be fast enough or may encounter read errors while the Spressa is burning the CD, and this will also cause a buffer underrun.
The drive is physically stable and quiet, and is solidly constructed. There are no cheap or flimsy parts... the drive tray is a bit noisy but that's the only thing. It has little or no vibration while it operates, and is generally quieter than the computer itself. I have had no problems with this drive reading any other CD media, and I generally use it as a backup when my DVD-ROM drive fails to read something properly.
Support for this product is well documented on the web. I have never had to call tech support, but there is a wide range of information available at http://sony.storagesupport.com/cdrw/crx145ech.htm. I can't find any firmware updates or the like, so maybe Sony has not had to make any modifications to this drive since it was first released.
Now I live in a college dorm and my friends are always coming to me and having me burn CD's for them. What more can you ask for from a burner than high speed and great performance? The Spressa 12x/8x/32x comes to mind. My next upgrade might be a 16x burner, but that can wait for quite some time.
I highly recommend the Sony Spressa Professional series of CD recorders. For the price, the performance is excellent. I have no comment on the included "CD Extreme" software, but from what I have seen in other reviews it works well and will do the same job, but with a different interface. This drive is one of the best, and for just about $200 I consider it one of my wisest investments.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
dsmeyer
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Member: Doug Meyer
Location: Austin TX
Reviews written: 39
Trusted by: 13 members
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