A brand that never disappoints with yet another great drive
Written: May 01 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Reliability, firmware upgrades, 4MB buffer, excellent compatibility.
Cons: Speed: There are faster drives out there.
The Bottom Line: Easy installation and usage, great compatibility, great support. I recommend this drive to anyone who is in the market for reliability and burns less than 10 CDs per day.
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| hansmuff's Full Review: Plextor PlexWriter 8/4/32 CD-RW Burner |
Plextor is a maker of high quality CD solutions. Their products range from low-end IDE burners to high-end SCSI CD towers. IDE drives were not always in Plextor's domain, but since it's such a lucrative market I suppose they want a slice of that pie too.
I bought this drive when 12x hit the market, and since then 12x has taken the 8x place in terms of pricing. I still do not regret buying this drive because it's been excellent in every way.
The drive comes packaged in a very sturdy "air pillow" to protect it from shock during shipping.. a wise decision.
Installation is a snap. Put the drive on an IDE port in your system, set the BIOS to enable that port and autodetect it, and you're probably all set. That's at least how it worked for me.
Windows 98, 2000 and Linux all had no problems detecting the drive and using it with various software packages. Windows software NERO and CDRWIN both worked instantly, and the Plextor proprietary software also works just fine.
I was able to burn my first CD 30 minutes after installation, that's really good. The CD worked just fine, so I tried a CDRW which is much slower (4x) but also works just fine.
Even though this drive does not have any of those newfangled buffer underrun protections like BurnPROOF, I have not ever had an error burning a disc even with lots of tasks running in parallel. The 4MB buffer is generous, and seems to do the job just fine. 4MB is enough to buffer about 3.5 seconds of data in 8x mode, so even if any program really sucks up a lot of CPU power, 3.5 seconds is a lot of time to get some more data to the burner.
Packet writing works very well for people who want to use CDs as floppy replacements.. conveniently drag&drop files on your CD/RW drive in explorer and the software will burn it to CD.
Disc-at-once, track-at-once, packet writing, all the various modes work great.
700MB discs are no problem at all. As a matter of fact, I burn on cheap 700MB discs all the time and never had problems... i fill those discs too.
In general, I have no media compatibility problems. Noname, Verbatim, TDK, Sony, PNY, anything works.
The drive reads and writes everything I toss at it, scratched CD's, long audio CDs with many tracks, you name it.
Lastly, Plextor constantly improves even their older models with firmware upgrades. Firmware is the software that's stored in the drive permanently and it basically operates the various components on the drive. Firmware upgrades often fix small problems like incompatibility with certain media or protocols.. very much like a BIOS upgrade for your motherboard. The Plextor web site always gives full detail about what is fixed, unlike other manufacturers who give you an update file and leave you guessing.
All things considered, this is a very unobtrusive upgrade. It adds new possibilities to your PC without having you jump through hoops to make use of them. It just plain works, and even has a competitive price tag.
I recommend this drive to beginners and professionals alike. Beginners will love the easy installation, professionals will love the support of all the features they want. I have no quarrels with this drive.
16x drives are just out, and 24x lurking on the horizon. However, if you just burn 0-10 CDs a day, don't think you really need a higher speed than 8x. How much is it worth to save 40 minutes per day (for 10 CDs, compared to a 16x burner), when you can burn and work at the same time anyway ? For higher volumes, check out the faster Plextor drives, I've only read good things about them.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 150
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
hansmuff
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Location: Exton, PA, USA
Reviews written: 36
Trusted by: 3 members
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