The Little Burner That Could
Written: Jul 03 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: portable, lightweight, easy to use
Cons: pricey
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| wongvi's Full Review: Ricoh Portable 4x4x20x CD-RW drive |
Before purchasing this burner I had an extremely hard time finding any information about it other than from the Ricoh sites. The person who first wrote the Epinions review didn't help either but I'll try my best to tell you a bit about the product.
When I was looking at portable burners the only one that I actually saw was the Panasonic KXL-RW10A. Then one day I was strolling through the computer store when there right beside the Panasonic KXL-RW10A was the Ricoh MP8040SE (or MP8040S, it really doesn't matter both of them are exactly the same thing). So I quickly got home and logged onto the net searching information on the drive. Specs-wise it is the exact same as the Panasonic but yet the Panasonic was more pricey. So I went and asked the store clerk why the Panasonic would make my wallet feel a little lighter. The reason, he explained was due to the fact that the interface card. Panasonic has a 32-bit version (CardBus) while the Ricoh only carried a 16-bit. Some further investigation when into that and I found it that the only difference it would make was that using the 32-bit bus there was very little chance of buffering out while with 16-bit if you are using the computer at the same time it might buffer out on you. Knowing that I wouldn't do anything while a CD is burning I decided that wasn't an important factor. So I decided to look elsewhere for advice.
CNET praised the Panasonic giving it its editor's choice award, while PC Shopper said that the Ricoh is a must have for any traveller. With that said I turned to friends for advice. They said that Ricoh has been known for its long life and they had made more CD-RW drives than Panasonic, plus the Ricoh was manufactured after the Panasonic. With that in mind I decided to get the Ricoh.
Breaking open the box I found the SCSII card to be in Japanese, (which to most of us is great since anything manufactured in Japan is known to be high quality, this goes for the drive as well which is also made in Japan) however I couldn't understand the manual so I just pointed Windows to the drivers on the disk and it installed perfectly. I started to burn CDs with the Adaptec software that came with the drive and I had no problems. A regular CD was done in 15 minutes, the norm for 4X write. So far I had no problems with the drive and with its sleek look it goes great with my laptop. For more information go to the Ricoh site, www.ricoh.com, try both the US and Japan site for extra information, I recommend the Japanese site for it has more.
Overall it was pretty easy to set up and use due to plug and play and the burning has been pretty good as well, no coasters!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
wongvi
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Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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