The Plextor brand of CD-RWs came recommended to me from friends who own the brand. Based on their recommendation, I went with Plextor's latest 12/10/32 CD-RW. I didn't know much about the difference between CD-RWs at the time when I bought them. Most people mentioned to me that the only difference was in the quality at which they write data. My first impressions with the Plextor brand were favorable.

Installation of the drive was quite easy. Plextor uses standard drivers from Windows, so the only thing to do after installation was to install the software for data writing. For this, a software disc is provided which contains Adaptec software. The software is easy to run and makes burning discs simple. It allows you to simply drag-and-drop with the mouse to copy (burn) data to the CD-RW. So far, everything was going well. I also downloaded the latest firmware updates, which you can find on their web page (www.plextor.com).

I soon found some complaints about my Plextor writer. I was using CDs made by Memorax to burn to, and I was getting a slow response from my computer when I would insert these discs -- sometimes my computer would lock-up even. Everything was fine with the discs, as they worked well with my sister's computer upstairs. They were also the proper speed at which the CD-RW burns at. I tried calling technical support about the problem, but I was simply told to leave a message and tech support would get back to me. After a week, no one has called me back.

Just out of curiosity, I tried using another CD to burn to, this one a Verbatim. This cd worked much better, and I found my lock up problem went away. Everything was running as I thought it should be. But the whole time, there was another feature of the Plextor cd-rom which was annoying me, and that was the rather loud "hum" it created while I was running a cd from it. This "hum" did not occur when the CD-RW was writing, but while it was installing software, or I was running a program that needed the cd to be in the drive. I tried to call tech support once again to ask if this "humming" is normal, but I was simply told to leave a message, and like before, I'm still waiting for a reply.

If your sole purpose for CD-RW is the quality at which it writes, Plextor is a great buy. But the difficulties and annoyances I have found after installation will leave me to buy another brand once I'm in the market for a new one.

Recommended: No