After fighting to get this CD writer to burn a CD successfully for a week, I was told by customer service to return it. He was stumped. I was stumped. I had called them 4 times.

My computer, a Compaq Presario with 400 MHz and 64MB RAM, is fast enough. There's no reason any of us could see that this machine wouldn't work. I accept that these things happen, but Philips could have done many things better to deal with such situations. Here are some tips to save you some time.

1) The instructions that come with the machine are useless. The book looks thick enough, but it's the same vague 5 pages about installation repeated in many different languages. They could easily have included a decent troubleshooting section. There isn't one word written about the software, and how you shouldn't install both programs that come with the burner because they interfere with each other (Then why bundle them together?)

2) Their website is useless. The FAQs answer almost no questions. It's very difficult to find a phone number you can call. The worldwide website, www.philips.com, has almost no links to the American website, www.philipsusa.com. Go there, and you'll find the right customer service phone number. I'll save you the step: 888-541-5837 (This is only for their CD peripheral products; apparently, they're so swamped with calls that this needs its own number).

3) Before you try these things, make sure that your machine has been defragmented, that no other programs are running (not even in the background; push CTRL+ALT+DELETE and end all other tasks besides Explorer), and that the CD burner is away from other machinery and protected from being bumped in any way.

4) The best advice of all is to buy another brand. Any other brand. Best of luck.

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