As with most drives they do not last long, thus when it was time to give up the old one i went shopping for a new one. I came across this one which was extremely cheap and thus bought it as LG has become more reputable.
The Pros
This drive was very easy to install. It was practically a plug and play drive. It also came with different front panels in order to change colors from black and white. Although this may seem pointless it is a factor to take into consideration if you are after certain specification like color for your computer. The drive has never had a problem playing any cd's DVD's and etc. It is also very quiet unlike many drives out there. It dvd writing speed is 18x which thus means it takes less than 3 minutes to burn an entire dvd. Ironically the box states it can record approximately 100,000 times which is far more than most people would ever do in their life time
The Cons
There are three problems with this drive. 1) It is not region free which thus makes it a pain if you live in a country in which there are pal and NTSCdvds. And unlike many other drives there are no programs to get rid of this so far. 2) There are no real beneficial firmware updates for this drive as it seems LG has forgotten about this drive and moved on. 3) This final problem is the killer part of this drive and the reason it is ranked so low. When durng xvid files and various other files onto a CD to watch on an xvid player and part of the files which are over 350 mb will not work. Thus typically TV shows are 350 mbs and meaning half the disc is wasted. Despite the cheap prices of CD's these days it still is a waste.
Conclusion
I would recommend this drive if you are on a very tight budget as it is by far the cheapest drive available to consumers. However the burning of CD's is a large issue thus if you have the money i would recommend going for an alternative product.
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