[filmscanners] Re: cdrw drives

["Charles Knox" <cknox@netspace.net.au>]

At 12:39 AM 3/2/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>At 10:29 PM 3/1/2002 , Austin Franklin wrote:
>>Take it back and...do what?
>
>Keep it and give me my money back. I know that's not going to happen. They
will just replace it with a refurbished one. Of course I can try and sell
it off and then switch brands.
>

In any case, why would you *want* to switch brands?

Any mfr can (and does) make the occasional lemon -- Plextor have always had
the name for making good products that work as advertised (as, given their
pricing, indeed they ought...)

Plus there might well be a quite reasonable explanation for your unit
failing -- not every problem is a manufacturing defect, especially with CD
burning, which I've found to be a most inexact science.

I now run a Plex 12-10-32S with which, so far, I'm well pleased -- it
replaced a Ricoh MP6200S which I bought (for AUS$1200...) in May 1997, and
which had to be serviced at least every 12 months (fortunately I can do
this myself) to keep it from making coasters.

None-the-less, some thousands of discs later the old Ricoh still works,
which is more than can be said for lots of stuff made since then.

The hard part with recommending specific brands to anyone is that, whilst
there are a *lot* of CDR/RW writers out there, there are but a few actual
manufacturers, and many re-branders shop around (Creative produced at least
three variations on just one model number -- all different engines from
different makers and each requiring programming changes to make existing
burning software work with them.)

And they changed the engines without telling anyone, even software
companies other than the bundled brand -- which caused quite a bit of grief
to users at the time.

Having said all that, I just installed a CyberDrive 16-12-40 IDE unit in a
machine I'm putting together for a relative, and was pleasantly surprised
at how easily it went in and how nicely it runs -- it's faster, quieter and
balances (balance is important with the speed most of today's drives reach)
better than the Plextor (at least, while it's new...)

Made in China, apparently by the vendor company, cheap as chips (AUS$150 --
about $78 US), complete with Nero 5.5 OEM and all needed hardware, even
down to mounting screws and sample discs.

Incidentally, I mentioned balance being important: My Sony 52X CD reader
has a disclaimer on the front to the effect that they will not be
responsible for the damage if a disc breaks up in the drive.

Given that, at 52X, these 5" bits of flimsy plastic are spinning faster
than my 5" angle grinder (a tool that demands cautious respect), I'm
unsurprised.

Charles


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