Primary CD-ROM Drive

Advantages: Cheap (around 85£), good quality
Disadvantages: Slow compared to the most recent cd recorders

...Few weeks ago, wondering around the web, looking for something interesting to buy with my beenz, I found this nice cd recorder: Philips PCRW804. It is very easy to install, I just put it in the right slot, connected to the secondary IDE as master (I preferred to leave cd rom on primary IDE as slave, this speeds up data transfer from cd rom to cd recorder), and started my pc. Windows 98 recognised the recorder immadiately, without the need to install any other driver. Philips PCRW804, can write CD-R and CD-RW, it writes CD-R at 8x and CD-RW at 4x; reading speed is 32x. I tested it with many different kinds of CD-R and CD-RW and it didn't give me any problem at all (using Nero 5.5.1.8). This recorder will save a lot of space on your hard disk and will let you bring your software or music anywhere you like!... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Price
Disadvantages: Installation

...The Mitsumi 4802TE CD writer is a reasonable budget buy, It is quite complicated to set-up and can conflict with other devices, for example my Mitsumi CD 48x drive! I had to replace my CD ROM drive to get the writer to work, Once the drive is installed it works reliably and produces the results, It is now slow by today’s standards. The software is useless I replaced mine with Adaptec Easy CD Creator. Even though the drive works, you can still buy better for about the same money. I would not recommend this drive to anyone... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average off topic

Advantages: Combo drive
Disadvantages: slighly slow CD burn rate compared to others

...I got this drive to eliminate the need for having separate DVD and CDRW drives when I was building a PC for someone. The drive is IDE and lives quite happily on your secondary channel as a master - this is the recommended option to eliminate CD writing failures and DVD playback artifacts. The drive comes complete with CD burning software in the shape of Nero Burning ROM V4, as opposed to the usual suspects of Adaptec Easy CD Creator or CeQuadrat Win On CD. This does not mean that the software is not up to par - far from it! NBR4 can do everything the competition can and more, such as overburning media and bootable CDs. The main reason for this is the DVD read capability. Although the 4x read is somehat behind what most dedicated DVD drives offer nowadays, in reality you only need 1x DVD read to view a movie. Let's face facts - how... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful