Firstly i have two of these drives in different PC's, the reason being it came installed in a PC i bought and was so reliable that i bought it when building my own! This in itself should show just what a good drive this is, now to expalin why...
The packaging is a rather uneventful affair, plainish box with little to really excite, and the manual is inside with a CD, which i presume is for the drivers to run it on your PC, but Windows XP will detect and install all the drivers you need for you. The manual is well written and goes through the usual do's and dont's as well as information on guarantee and repair options. It has a step by step instruction on how to install and set up the drive, which was presise and informative.
The drive looks much like any other internal drive, plain metal chassis with warning stckers attached and the front part with the tray ( the only part you will see once installed ) is a subtle but smart looking black, with no distinctive markings as such other than the small green light which illuminates when in operation.
Once i had set the jumper plug on the back, which by default is in the Master setting, i was ready to plug in. The Master setting is if you are using the drive as your main drive, other drives will need to be put into slave mode for each subsequent drive. The power plug on the back of this unit is a standard four pin molex connector, which i believe is the same as all CD/DVD drives, then once connected i simply slotted the drive into place and screwed it tight into position. Installation or ease of will differ from person to person as its the individuals PC case that determines just how easy installation is.
Once i booted up and found everything to be working correctly it was time to test it, so firstly i made a collection of audio tracks to burn onto a CD. the actual burning process is in two parts. 1:Where the PC has to collate information and convert it so it will play in a CD player and stage 2: where the actual burning procedure takes place. The first part is dependant on the speed and ability of your PC and its software, so i will only judge the second part of the operation. Once my music was ready to burn the drive whirr's into action and the light flashes away, then within a minute or two the tray ejects with my completed CD ready to play. ITS FAST. It burns CD's at 48x speed and DVD's at 16x Speed, so the DVD burning takes a little longer, about 5 or 6 minutes, but thats still pretty fast!
The tray operation is fast and smooth, no jerking and it is responsive to when you want it to eject or put in a CD/DVD.
Not once have i had a problem with either of my two drives, and they have extensive use on a almost daily basis, i push my equipment quite hard but this drive seems to have no problem with that.
On the whole i would advise anyone who needs or wants a new CD/DVD drive to get this one, i paid £35 for mine from a local PC outlet and it is very good value for money. It reads and writes to all blank CD's and DVD's + or - except DVD-RAM discs, DVD-RAM is the type usually accociated with DVD Recorders for your TV, it will not read or write to these, which is the only downside, but for me is not a problem as i dont use RAM discs. NEC is a brand you can trust.
Any questions or if i have missed a point you would like cleared, please leave a comment in my guestbook.
More details
Memory / capacity
Good
Design
Satisfactory
Ease of use
Very easy
Instruction manual
Good
Manufacturer Support
Good
Speed
Very fast
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