Freecom FS 50

Author's product rating:   

Reliability	Average
Ease of Installation	Satisfactory
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	Works non - mains connected
Disadvantages:	poor documentation, bus powered is a cheat

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Some Techie Stuff
---------------
Firstly yes this review is a bit techie so to try and explain some stuff.. skip this if you know your stuff already:

USB means Universal Serial Bus - those connectors on every PC now that can connect all sorts of external devices.

bus powered means a USB device that takes all the power it requires from the USB lead and doesn't need to be plugged in separately to the mains.

mA means thousandths of an Amp. An Amp is a measure of electric current, batteries can only supply so much, each USB port has a maximum current supply of 500mA (half an Amp)

Lightscribe - a superb new technology. The CD (or DVD) has a special coating, if you want to label it you don't need to print something out and stick it on, you turn the disk over, put it in a lightscribe drive and your labeling software (Nero Cover Designer) can use the laser in the CD drive to burn your picture onto the disk. A Complex picture can take 20 minutes to complete but the effect is superb. Lightscribe disks cost a little more than normal blank CDRs are a bit harder to come by.

Why would you want one?
----------------------
A friend of mine said that no five and quarter in devices were bus powered - its good to prove him wrong and a bus powered device suits me very well. I use mine connected to a Fujitsu Siemens tablet which doesn't have a CD/DVD drive built in at all. This means that I now have an external CDROM drive and can still run not tethered to the mains. If you need to add an extranl CD or DVD drive to a laptop you can use a unit like this.

How does it work?
----------------
The trick is a battery pack of four AAA Nimh cells. You first plug the device into an external charger to charge these up, then you connect it to your computer via a double headed USB cable (i.e. two ports on computer and device). One of these shows up just as an HID (but draws 500mA); the other is the drive again drawing just shy of 500mA. 1 Amp of current will power the device as long as you don't want to read or write to it, then it needs extra juice and sips it from the batteries. When the batteries are low the drive just doesn't work properly, if the batteries are dead the device isn't even recognised. The batteries will not charge from USB (the manual starts to say they will but then changes its mind), you occasionally need to reconnect the device to the adapter to charge it. You can also use the drive with one USB lead in and connected to the mains adapter for all the remaining current.

Operation
---------
In operation, how does it work, put disks in and it plays them, as long as the batteries are charged it works fine - I haven't yet found out quite how long a set of batteries will last before you need to recharge the device. There is no way to monitor the state of the batteries. The eject button and getting the CD draw to close can be a bit fiddly but once the disks in its OK. Performance seems fine.

Watch for the wrong one
-----------------------
Another trick to watch for is that there seem to be two models of drive: a new one with lightscribe and an older one without. The drives look almost identical so be sure you get the correct one. You can tell from the product number (call Art No on the bottom of the drive. The FS-50 lightscribe has an ART number of 25219 the older non lightscribe FS-50 has an ART no: 24666.

Support
-------
Overall I'd say that neither the manual, nor the manufacturers web site were particularly useful for troubleshooting the device. In fact the web site is poor and Freecom should be ashamed. There is a driver disk and lots of installation instructions for Windows 98 though which might still interest someone?

Recommendation
--------------
The drive is good but not quite as good as the manufacturer seems to think it is.