Intro

I should start this review by saying that my Lacie burner was one of the best purchases I have made over the last 3 or 4 years, ranking up there with my G4 Cube.

Value of a CD Writer

Why? Well, backing up your data from time to time is very important. And it's a very convenient machine to have if you need to backup your HD before you wipe your system for a defragmenting. This is true since Mac users have almost no decent software (Norton didn't help me much) to defrag a hard disk other than to erase and start again.

You'll need to do this if you download a lot of MP3s, for instance. Defragging makes your computer more efficient and less prone to crash after completing a lot of downloads.

Burn Quality

My Lacie burner didn't burn any duds or 'coasters' for well over a year and that reliability always made me feel good for having purchased it.

The Toast 4 software I received with my burner was really pretty decent and easy to use - nothing fancy, but it did everything I needed it to. It also offers you the chance to simulate burning a disc. Now, that might not sound *very* exciting, but you can test out burning discs at higher speeds without risking ruining a CD.

Speed

For a professional, the burner would be a bit slow - 20 or so minutes to burn a 70 minute CD. But if you're not into making tons of CDs daily then this will suit you just fine. Put your CD on to burn, then go read the newspaper. It will even verify the burnt CD's integrity, once it's done. But I actually found I could skip the verification stage because my Lacie burner produced perfect CDs every time.

Also, I imagine the following applies to many if not all CD burners: when you are burning a disc, you are unable to use your computer for other tasks. Hence, if you frequently need to use your computer throughout the day, you might want to buy a faster CD burner - in order to minimize the down-time of your computer.

Appearance

The burner comes with an external volume control and a headphone jack and its blue and cream colour makes it not unattractive to have on your desktop.
One negative is that it does burn a bit loudly.

Software Problems

The one problem I've had is that when you plug the USB cable into your computer, a message pops up on your desktop saying that your Lacie software has not been installed properly and that it needs to be reinstalled.

Oddly, Lacie says this message is to be expected, and that you should simply ignore it. Sure enough, once you dismiss this message the burner should mount. My question is - how good is a piece of software that gives you a misleading message? Or how professional is it when no one finds it necessary to fix that bug? Furthermore, I have found that once in a while you may need to reinsert the USB connection a couple of times in order for the drive to mount.

In addition, a few weeks ago (about a year and a half after my purchase), I had some more problems with my burner, such as it only writing at 2x speed for audio CDs (otherwise, coaster time!). I am still looking into the cause of this - it might be related to my use of newer CD burning software, but it may also be a repair issue. I general, I would recommend purchasing an extended warranty on your CD burner, as you would with any other valuable electronic appliance. Replacing a burner with a new one is just not cost effective at the current price of $200-260 US. An extended warranty is a much better deal, especially for the peace of mind it gives you. (Hint: Some credit cards offer an additional year warranty on any items purchased using it.)

Finally, Squint & Read The Small Print

Also, there are a few bits of important info (including troubleshooting) buried in the readme and info files. I know no one reads these tiny, hard to read guides, and for this reason I wish a booklet of tips had been included with the burner. Even a skinny one that warns you, for example, not to plug burner into USB slot in keyboard or else the burner won't mount. Otherwise you might think the burner was broken as soon as you've taken it out of the box.

Once you get the Lacie CD-RW going (and don't play around with new software), the burner does a really good job!

Problem Solving Update, Oct. 3rd:

The problem with my Lacie burner was iTunes! This music playing software's extensions (and other burning software) conflicted with the Toast software and prevented my Mac from recognizing it. This was suggested by Lacie's tech support which was really professional and smart.


Recommended: Yes