Next to Perfect
Written: Jul 17 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: FAST disk writing, perfectly stable, no coasters, packet writing, 80 minute support
Cons: No overburning
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| hingeswift's Full Review: Sony Spressa CD-RW (4X/2X/24X) |
Over three years ago, I bought a Memorex CR-622 2x burner - the first commercially available IDE burner under $300. It worked fine for a while, but then inexplicably starting "coastering" nearly every other disk. I finally had my fill about a month ago and decided to look into a new burner. That's when I found this beauty.
The Sony CRX145E is a 10x/4x/32x CD-RW with an IDE interface. This is *exactly* the same drive as the Hewlett-Packard 9300 (HP uses Sony parts for their drives.) My decision was a toss up between the Sony and the HP drives; when I discovered that the HP was mechanically identical to the Sony, I opted for the CRX145E on the sole basis that the front of the drive is nicer looking than the HP 9300, which has that goofy "swish" across the face plate. I intended to use Ahead Technologies Nero Burning Rom (http://www.ahead.de) for burning, so the differences in bundled software between HP and Sony were inconsequential to me. If you intend to use the bundled software, I would still recommend the Sony over the HP due to the inclusion of the abCD packet writing software.
Installation is simple for anyone who has ever opened their computer case - 3 minutes at most. With the drive in place, I decided to install Nero under Windows 2000 Professional and test it by creating an audio CD. I burned out a *full* 74 minute Redbook audio CD-DA in SEVEN MINUTES. No errors whatsoever. I have since burned over two dozen disks of data and audio, all at the full 10x speed of the drive and they are all perfect. No more coasters.
The CRX145E supports 80 minute CDs (700MB), which comes in handy for burning out long audio disks or copying CDs that have been overburned. Unfortunately, this drive does NOT support overburning (if it did, it would technically be out of CD-R specification.) It does support CD-TEXT, which allows you to name your audio CDs for use on newer CD players. One of the really nice features (as I mentioned earlier) is the packet writing capability. This essentially allows you you format a CD-RW and then write to it like a floppy disk. Rather than burning out an entire disk, you can open the disk in Windows Explorer and simply drag and drop files onto it, or delete files off the disk without erasing the entire CD. This is an extremely nice feature for transporting large files. Be aware however that formatting a CD-RW for packet writing reduces its capacity to just over 500MB in order to accommodate the packet stream file system. Also, the abCD software only works in Windows 98 and Windows Millenium - you can't write to the disk from Windows 2000, at least not with the presently shipping release of the software. The packet disks can however be read from Win2K.
This drive is wonderful, and I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a *nice* CD burner. It's a bit pricier than some of the others, but speaking as someone who sells computers for a living, you really do get what you pay for. The speed and stability of this drive are worth every penny to me.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
hingeswift
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Reviews written: 19
Trusted by: 15 members
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