Hewlett Packard CD –writer plus 7200e
Written: May 09 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: very good files backup machine
Cons: Its not the best out there.
The Bottom Line: Very good machine if you want to back up files with a laptop
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| tarek7's Full Review: HP SureStore CD-Writer Plus |
The machine was bit on the expensive side when they came up first it was about 600 Canadian dollars but I decided to buy any way as I needed to back up my files as my hard disk on my laptop at that time was limited to 4 GB, which was not much when you download lots of stuff like mp3 and programs.
That storage device comes with the following
1-A user guide
2-one blank CDRW
3-one blank CDR
4-data cable
5-power supply and power cord
6-Software installation CDs
7-Driver installation diskette
8-audio cable
9-bundle of software
The main reason I bought the drive was to back up data and its one hell of a machine doing that kind of stuff.
I would like to bring your attention to an important point, always before buying any kind of storage device, make sure that you know what kind of data you want to back up, see for example if you want to back up the format CD+G karaoke CDs that machine will not do it for you!
Same goes to DVD format, so always keep in mind what you want do with it as a priority so you will get the job done.
The installation process was very easy as the guidebook makes things very simple in steps also the installation CD comes with video explanations and installation process.
Generally talking the machine slows your computer down as its an external drive and it connects to your computer through a parallel port which your printer use, please note that the E beside the model number denotes to external drive as in 7200e.
The machine has a headphones plug and a controlling volume knob in case you decided to listen to a music CD.
A nice advantage I found is that the power supply is a universal kind meaning you can use the machine in any country though the voltage difference and the frequency oscillation of each countries current.
To put it in another way say you are in the states, the voltage is 110 AC and the frequency is 50 HZ, the device will work fine, now say you move to any European country where they use 220 voltage AC and frequency of 60 HZ, the device will work fine there too with no adjustments to make or any transformers to buy which is pretty cool, especially if you are a business man and you travel a lot
After installing the software, you have a choice of either using the direct CD or Adaptec easy creator, well direct CD is cool it all depends on drag and drop as if you are having another hard drive with a capacity of 650MB which is cool compared to a zip drive that only have a capacity of 100MB or 250 MB.
The speed of reading CDs is 24 and the speed of writing or rewriting is either 2x or 1x, this means that the burning time of 74 minutes CD can take 74 minutes if you are using 1x and about 37 minutes if you are using 2x.
The driver is very sensitive and don’t like any kind of interruptions while burning so if you have any anti virus working in the background or any other programs, please make sure to shut them off , else you get a nice coaster , and we don’t want that, right?
If your computer freezes while burning, you can salvage your CD by restarting your pc and using the same application, but on one condition never get the CDR or CDRW out of the drive,
If you are in to burning music or data, then the software you got is just fine, but if you are a game geek and like burning playstation games…etc , you will need another kind of software ,like Cdrwin or nero .
Please keep in mind that Cdclone does not work with that machine as far as I know.
Like I said the machine comes with some software, which is
1-Norton antivirus
2-Photo organizer
3-Corel print house magic
4-Adobe photo Deluxe
5-Hp simple trax
Generally talking the machine is great it works fine and the backup copies are more than great as I copy with the speed 1x which makes any cd rom or disk player reads the data perfectly, you can almost copy any thing except CD+G (karaoke) and DVDs in their original format, keep in mind you have to by pass some CD protection if you are copying playstation games…etc
The machine likes some kinds of CDRs and hate some CDRs , it likes Maxell and it hates Memorex , please keep that in mind so you will not make a coaster, I have made many …………lol
The machine does not need any special cleaning as long you keep your CDs clean, I think it will not be a nice idea using the Cds lens cleaner as it might damage your machine, so just make things simple and keep your CDs clean in their original box, also you may use a vacuum cleaner as long as you don’t disassemble the machine itself so you will not damage any internal electronic parts.
That’s all, thank you for reading.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
tarek7
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Location: Cape Breton,N.S,Canada
Reviews written: 19
Trusted by: 7 members
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