The Bottom Line: This is a good, general purpose drive. It is solidly built and will suit most needs. Makes an excellent second drive or non-gamer drive.
bwestman's Full Review: BenQ CD 656A Internal 56x CD-ROM Drive
Lately, I've been doing a vast amount of upgrading, shifting around, and switching out parts on my computer and my son's computer. One of the choices I made was to give my son my DVD drive and install an inexpensive CD-Rom drive in my system in it's place. I have a CDRW drive with a 48x read speed, but I wanted a second drive for general use.
I purchased the ACER CD-656A 56x CD-Rom drive for my system. This is an IDE drive so installation was very simple. I just opened up the case, slipped the drive where my DVD drive had been, plugged in the cables and closed it all up. Windows 98 correctly identified the drive and no further set up was required. The drive I purchased didn't come with any software or drivers since none are required for this drive to operate. A 3-1/2" floppy was included with DOS drivers.
Aesthetics
The face of the drive is the standard beige color, with a headphone jack on the left, two buttons for volume control, a drive "busy" indicator light, a track advance button and the eject button. The words "Acer" and "56x" are emblazoned on the front. All in all, it is a pretty standard looking drive, with everything you need. As drives go, it is acceptably attractive. The tray has the ever present emergency eject hole (which I wouldn't have a clue how to use, but I guess it could be pretty important if you ever needed it).
Techno-babble
For the money, this drive has some nice features. For those of you who care about that stuff (I do), here are the specs:
• Flashable memory for firmware updating
• 8400Kb/s Max data transfer rate
• 90ms Access time
• 128K buffer
Another feature that captured my attention was the supported disk formats. This drive reports the capability to read:
• CD-Audio
• CD-ROM (Mode 1 & Mode 2)
• CD-ROM(Mode2, form 2)
• CD-Plus
• CD-i/FMV
• Video CD
• Photo CD(single and multi-session)
• I-TRAX enhanced CD
• Karaoke CD
• CD-R, CD-RW
With an active CDRW in my system, I appreciate having a drive that can read so many formats. This allows me to make copies "on the fly", which dramatically speeds up the copy process. The drive is capable of digital audio extraction at the rate of 24x, which far exceeds any other drive I've used for this purpose.
This drive is also capable of reading Playstation CD's for raw copying. No, it will NOT play the playstation CD's, but for those of us who make backups of our games for "sometimes less than careful" children, this is a plus.
Pros
First of all, the drive is nicely designed. It's appearance is pleasant and it feels solid. It weighs in at 2.0 lbs and the CD tray slides in and out quickly and smoothly. It has the feel of a stable piece of equipment.
With the wide variety of disk formats this drive can read, it is an excellent choice for a basic, general drive. I would recommend it to any casual user.
Installation is a breeze and the enclosed user guide, while not necessary for most intermediate to advanced users, it well laid out and easy to follow for the novice.
The drive comes with a one-year warranty, with toll free phone numbers for BOTH Customer Service AND Technical Support. I haven't had to actually call either number, but it's nice to know they are there.
Cons
I really only have one complaint with this drive. There are a couple of programs that it will not read. I am a game player. My favorite game is The Sims and this drive will not install the programs. Once installed, they seem to run okay, though. I don't know if it is the copy protection or what. The Sims is protected with SafeDisc2 copy protection and that may be the issue. I've had some problems playing Zeus when using that drive as well. The game has occassionally locked up. Those problems all go away when I put the CD in my CDRW drive.
UPDATE 08/10/02:
Duh...I turned of the DMA setting on the drive (which I suppose Windows 98 turns on automatically) and all my gaming problems went away...this really is a nice drive.
Overall
In summary, for what I paid, this is a nice drive. I haven't run it through any benchmark tests but it runs most programs flawlessly and smoothly. The 56x is a relative term and well exceeds any software requirements. Would I buy it again? Probably. However, given what I know about the gaming issues, I personally would probably skip this drive if it were going to be my ONLY CD-Rom drive.
Flash Memory for Firmware Updating E-IDE / ATAPI Interface 8400KB/s Max. Data Transfer Rate Supports Ultra DMA with 33.3 MB/s Burst Data Transfer Rate...More at Amazon Marketplace
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.