I may be getting totally out of my depths with this review, because I am not a technical person, but the reason for writing it is that there are many non technical people that buy products thinking that they have the answers to their technical problems at their finger tips, driven on by advertising, or promotional prices (as was my case), and having their enthusiasm dwindled down into total disappointment by products that do not give what they promise.
I bought this writer because I wanted to back up DVDs. I also do a lot of music CDs because we don't like to use CD's that have cost us a fair packet in the workshop, and prefer to play copies in such an environment. I had become very good at making CD's and when I bought this at a very reasonable price of 25.00 GBP, I should have guessed that at the price it was offered, it would be problematic. After all, in most things in my life I go by the saying that you get what you pay for.
Mine was an internal drive, and I had the shop that I use on a regular basis put the driver into my computer for me. They are very experienced at this kind of work, and work that I cannot perform myself due to lack of expertise.
The drive came with two covers, so that you can match your existing computer, either in the standard cream colour or black. The drive itself is not impressive looking, and looks very similar to any other drive I have on the computer.
In the box, it amazed me that there were no instructions, just a picture of vague fittings which looked nothing like the inside of my computer, and had I tried to fit this myself, I would have come unstuck. There was also a cable provided and this proved to be useless.
Going on from having the drive fitted, I also had the shop install the disc that came with the driver for Nero, which is a program for copying and creating discs. This is the only software that came with the drive and there were no drivers included, and what amazed both myself and the shop was that they had to search in order to find the right drivers to make the drive work. This should never have been the case, and they advised me that the driver was so obscure that it was a struggle to find the right one.
WHAT DOES THE DRIVE DO ?
This drive is supposed to copy in CD form or in DVD form. For the copying of music, it compares well with my old drive, though the nightmare began when I tried to copy DVD. It took ages. It came up always with an unsuccessful message, and even though I went through the process of using DVD shrink and other software, it would not produce a DVD.
The speed at which the driver worked for music was impressive although my old drive copied music successfully, and this was not my main reason for the purchase.
BACKING UP MY FINDINGS
I could not fairly write this review until I had time to experience another driver, which I have now with the Liteon DVD writer. Both write at 16X although the speed means very little to me as a user. Both have exactly the same specs and do can do double coated copies (although this is beyond me).
The difference was that this cost me around the 70 GBP mark and before having it installed by the shop, I asked the technician to try and copy dvd on the existing drive. Now, he really is a man with experience, who used my computer, the same programs as me but more experience, and he really could not produce one DVD.
When he fitted the new drive, I also asked him to perform the function of copying a dvd, which he did successfully, and which satisfied me that it was not my lack of experience that made this drive fail. It really was a bad design that didn't work properly. Looking back on the purchase, I feel pretty stupid.
Now with my new LiteOn drive, I performed exactly the same tasks I had tried on this drive, and voila !!! my faith in both myself and technology has been restored.
MANUFACTURERS SUPPORT.
Now here, we take you to a website that has absolutely no contact numbers or email addresses at all. My drive was bought in France. I wanted to contact someone here and ask questions, and there was no link whatsoever to anything ressembling technical expertise.
GUARANTEE
I was told that the drive was guaranteed for one year. I have since taken it back to the supermarket where I bought it and was told that promotion goods do not have the same guarantee as non promotion ones, so their promise of guarantee did not come to anything more than a promise unkept.
Needless to say, I did not enjoy the experience, and felt a complete clutz, made an absolute idiot of myself and it was only when an experienced person tried to do the same thing and proved to me that it was not my lack of technical know how that I actually gained enough confidence to try again with another drive.
MY VOTE
Leave the cheap stuff on the shelf and go for reputation every time. I learned, and to my cost.
Rachel
More details
Memory / capacity
Satisfactory
Design
Very poor
Ease of use
Very awkward
Instruction manual
Totally unhelpful
Manufacturer Support
Totally unhelpful
Speed
Average
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