Sony NEC Optiarc BC-5500A

Advantages: Portable, CD-RW/DVD Combo, everything I needed!
Disadvantages: None, yet!

...I am a software developer and I have a desktop computer at home. Due to daily train travel and my starting a University course in my spare time I decided that I also needed a laptop. My budget was £1500 including VAT. After looking at various makes including Dell, NEC, Toshiba, Tiny IBM and Compaq I settled on the Sony Vaio PCG-FX503 (£1300 including VAT). Standard spec: Intel P-III 1.00 GHz Processor 256 MB SDRAM 20 GB Hard Drive CD-RW/DVD Combo 14.1" Screen Windows XP Home There are other models in the FX500 series based on AMD Athlon or AMD Duron chips but these suffer with less battery life (2¼ hours compared with 3½ hours of the FX503). The FX503 is the only model in the range to use the Intel processor. Why the Sony? Why did I discount the other makes (in reverse order!)? - IBM & Compaq - price, price, price and price. Too... Read review

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Advantages: Reads practically everything. Writes to TWO formats (+RW and -RW)
Disadvantages: None so far, but disk costs make it more important not to waste any

...Betamax and VHS tapes, at least these things are all the same shape, so that, given a sufficiently versatile machine, it should be possible to read/play them all, even if you can only record one of them. NEC ND-1300A And this is where I FINALLY get to the point. I’ve just bought a NEC ND-1300a DVD Re-Writer to put in my latest reincarnation of my PC. Not only can it read all the existing formats of DVD, but unlike the vast majority of its peers, it can actually write to TWO of them, not the more normal one. There is one other maker producing a similar machine at time of writing, Sony, but this is in such heavy demand that it is on very long delivery and/or higher priced. At £220 for the retail version, complete with recording software bundle, the NEC doesn’t actually, when bought from www.dabs.com, cost much more than a single format... Read review

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Advantages: Quick burning and access time
Disadvantages: Poor build quality

...I purchased this drive early last year to replace a failing sony cd writer I had in my pc at the time. I had heard good things about this drive as it was supposed to be the fastest on the market at the time for burning both cds and dvds. After installing the drive in my pc the drive was picked up fine by the bios and windows detected it as the correct drive. The first thing I did was test the burn speed of both cd and dvd. I was not disappointed as this drive burnt cds in only a few mins and dvds were not much slower. Unfortunately as this was my only dvd writer I cannot compare it to other drives in the dvd writing department. In terms of cd burning, it was around 20 seconds quicker than my sony drive which was rated at the same burn speed (this may be due to newer firmware etc as the drive is about 2 years newer than the sony... Read review

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