Good hardware, bad software
Written: May 10 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good price; well-built hardware
Cons: Inadequate software, no workarounds.
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| mpender's Full Review: Sony Spressa CD-RW (4X/2X/24X) |
The drive itself is nice and rugged; but the software shipped with it is lousy. My Spressa 100/EX2 came with different (wrong?) drivers (Spressa 120), and poor archiving software (Sony's ExtremeCD) that does not allow a user to make a full backup or to make a backup requiring multiple CDs. Nor did it include software to write to the CDRW disk by drive letter, so a user cannot use standard backup software like MS-Backup.
The worst "feature" of the software is the cryptic, unintelligible error messages, like: Error -9 at sector 12345. The "manual" and help files neglect to mention what the error message means. My favorite is definitely the "Operation terminated in error" message that does not say _anything_ about the nature of the error. The "manual" and html help files were obviously translated from Japanese by a person or persons that do not read/write idiomatic English.
The drive itself is a good buy at the price, but the software is inadequate, even for occasional use. Unfortunately, a user can't just "uninstall" the ExtremeCD program and use third-party software like Adaptec's CD Creator, because the software does not follow the Windows requirement that hardware drivers are left in-system when software is removed. Consequently, if you uninstall the ExtremeCD software, it also uninstalls the hardware drivers, and the third-party software will not recognize the drive.
That's a problem because third-party software wants the "auto-insert" notification active, while ExtremeCD wants it turned off. Trying to use both causes hardware conflicts when both try to access the drive. :(
Apparently Sony is unaware of the problems because they do not provide any drivers, updates, or alternative software for the drive on their web pages in the United States or Europe.
Hence, no work-around exists for the inadequate software.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
mpender
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Reviews written: 5
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