Drives > Sony Drives > by Read Speed

Advantages: plug in and use
Disadvantages: none so far

Having recently had my computer pack up on me whilst moving house I decided to go out and get a new all singing all dancing one to replace it. What I did not even think of checking out as did it have a floppy drive on it! And of cours like a lot of modern machines it did not. Well I only use the floppy to back up my accounts and take them to the accountant so he can do my year end, which i had done on the old machine so when the disk came back there ...
...these drives as i did not want to open the case and start poking about. Talk about easy I plugged it into the usb and away windows xp whent and installed it and allocated it drive a so it worked with my trusty old accounts program with no messing about. compared to the fixed drive on my old computer i find it a bit slow but so far very reliable and thats about all you can ask from a simple divise such as a floppy drive. ... Read review

Advantages: Well known brand.
Disadvantages: none

To begin with, it loks nice. The simple front design does away with exterior volume dials and headphone jacks, all there is, is one open/close button. It was incredibly easy to install. All i had to do was slot it in (making sure my jumper settings were correct for my set up) and install the cables into it. I used NERO to find out the results. To test the DVD i used CSI:Miami the game. Eject time: 1.62 seconds Close time: 1.56 seconds Spin-up ...
...DVD is 16x). Spin-down time (Time taken to reach standard revoloution rate after reaching fastest.) Spin -up time: 5.14 seconds Spin-Down time: 3.81 seconds Time taken for disc recognition: 10.05 seconds I would recommend this drive becasue it is simply fit and forget. I have given the instruction manual a totally unhelpful rating becasue it didn't come with one. With the drive you also get power DVD 5 ... Read review

Advantages: Fast, Good Software, External
Disadvantages: External Power Needed, Sony Software

I already have a built in DVD, I already have a built in CD-RW. I couldn't resist getting a DVD-RW. I've had it a fairly long time now, I havn't had any problems with it at all. Looks wise its not the best, it doesn't match my black dell very nice cause its a cream colour but thats not a problem its what it does that counts. It comes with loads of software, such as Sonic MyDVD and RecordNow. I've made 100s of DVDs using it, had about 2 or 3 fail ...
...CDs is unbelivably fast. I can make a full 80mins music CD in about 2mins burning time. Its fantastic. As for the external side of things. It comes with long enough cables to suit your needs, but nothing ridiculously long to add to the wires I already have everywhere. I turn it on as and when needed, it has the on light on the front for the times when I forget to turn it off. Its completly silent when its on, and when its burning or reading a disc ... Read review

Advantages: Great name for badge snobs
Disadvantages: Expensive with too many rough edges

...It seemed to me that Sony rushed this DVD unit to the market in order to be one of the very first with a multi-format drive. There were certainly rough edges right from the start. The main problems were with authoring DVD disks when the unit would start cutting and for reasons unknown would then find some error and eject the disk. Goodbye blank disk, hello another coaster. There was no real pattern to this and it would happen with a number of different ...
...one. That's not to say that every Sony drive is like this - far from it - the newer models appear to work well and their prices are quite competitive. They've even dropped the quirky looks of the 510A. But as for my one, its the thumbs down I'm afraid. ... Read review

Advantages: "works" with Mac and Windows
Disadvantages: Too many to list.

...work... (using Taiyo Yuden media bought from Microboards authorised retailers) >Manuals... inexistent! After days of bugging their support, a PDF was emailed over... > Support - rude and unhelpful most of the time. Takes days to get anything out of them In short? Stay well clear from this product! ... Read review