Freecom Portable II

Advantages: Portable, cheap
Disadvantages: uses a lot of CPU

...I bought the Freecom portable DVD-ROM drive for my laptop, which only had an internal CD ROM drive. I wanted to play DVD's and was able to do so. The drive is external, and connects to any computer via a parallell port, firexire, USB or PC card, through the PCMCIA slot of a laptop. If the PCMCIA port also has ZV (Zoomed Video) capability, it is a huge bonus. It came with an excellent driver, and software, and was easy enough to install on Windows ME (it is also supported by NT, 95, 98, XP etc). However, I did find that the picture and sound were quite jerky, and sometimes almost unwatchable. I got around this by buying a hardware MPEG II decoder card ("Dvd-to-go", from Margi systems), which sorted out the problem. But I was lucky that I happened to have 2 PCMCIA slots, as it turned out i needed both: one for the Freecom card and one... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: SIze, portability, reliablity
Disadvantages: 120gb capacity is average

...I purchased one of these hard drives a good 6 months ago. Still running perfectly and I use it daily. 120gb is big enough to fulfill the needs of the majority of users. Altho larger capacity hard drives are available from freecom. Maybe the best thing about this hard drive, is its small size and portability, fits in your jeans pocket, can easily take those most important files anywhere you need them. I personally even use it in conjunction with my DVD player which has USB compatibility, to view my files such as Photos & Videos straight onto my TV. Another good thing about the hard drive, comes with software that enables you to backup your computer onto the external hard drive. Overall, certainly worth the money for portablity, reliability and general use.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Small footprint, USB connectivity, good capacity, quiet
Disadvantages: All the above completely let down by the units reliability

...Please take a few seconds to rate this at the end - it helps me know if its meaningful or not and I can improve accordingly Ok... Its big...its black...it hums quietly in the corner. Oh..and its made by Freecom - a manufacturer I previously thought was pretty reliable (I have their dual layer portable DVD re-writer as well). This drive is billed as being rugged and portable - after all that is the whole point of external portable drives, isnt it? When I got the unit, it was twice as big in capacity as the HDD in my tower PC, so I immediately throught - backup. It didnt come with any back-up soft ware though, which I think is a glaring omission. No matter, I thought, I will back up my photos (10,000+), music (14,000 tracks), etc into folders I create myself. Connection simply means attaching the power cable to a free socket... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful