I bought this DVD re-writer in January and had problems with it literally from day one. It first the problems were very mild, it would not register the cheaper discs when inserted into the drive but it would write them. However these discs were written to a poor quality and were unplayable on two of our standalone DVD players and barely playable on the third. Then the bigger problems started.
Four months after being it this DVD player ceased to read DVD movies at all and occasionally would not read CDs or CD-ROM either. This meant that we could not erase any rewritable discs to write something else onto them.
A month and a half after this the DVD rewriter also stopped writing DVD and CD and therefore became thoroughly useless to us. Although £90 is cheap for a DVD rewriter it was also a lot of money to lose on one. Thankfully as it was the drive that was proven faulty we were given a full refund by the store at which we bought it. Qualified technicians at this store also installed our drive so we are in no doubt at all that the faults were with the drive and not caused by external factors.
On a slightly happier note the software that came with the DVD rewriter - WinDVD was superb. Unfortunately this did little to warm me to the rewriter itself.
I am unsure whether or not these faults were an isolated incident or whether all Ricoh rewriters are of a poor quality. I would not advise anyone to buy this drive just in case the problems I had with mine were not isolated as others may not be as lucky getting their money back. Specifications
Manufacturer's Web site www.ricohpmmc.com *Software supplied InterVideo WinDVD 4, WinOnCD 6 SE, Drag 2 Disc, MedioStream NeoDVD, MedioStream NeoEdit
Basic warranty 2yrs RTB
Cables supplied EIDE,
analog audio Specifications * Miscellaneous Screws
Technology DVD+R, DVD+RW, CD-R, CD-RW *Operating system support Windows XP Yes Windows 98/Me Y/Y Windows 2000 Yes Other NT
