You get what you pay for: Memorex CD-RW is average
Written: Apr 17 '03 (Updated Apr 17 '03)
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Pros: Cheap, easy to install.
Cons: Bare-bone software, upgrading issues.
The Bottom Line: This is good drive for novices who just need a functioning burner, but I wouldn't recommend it for more experienced computer users. You get what you pay for.
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| tito4life's Full Review: Memorex FourtyMAXX 1248 (32023287) CD-RW Burner |
Last summer I purchased a Memorex 40maxx CDRW drive: the drive came packaged with an IDE cable, power cable, blank CDR and CDRW media, and a comprehensive instruction manual. It also came with a CD-ROM containing the driver and Roxio Burning software.
Setup was a cinch. The instruction manual provided detailed pictures of how to install the drive, provided you know how to open your computer and get to your motherboard. What should have been the hardest part of installation was perhaps the easiest: I just slid the drive into my open bay, and connected the IDE cables to my motherboard.
After this, I easily installed the drivers and Roxio’s burning software, Easy CD Creator. However, to my dismay I found out that the program did not allow burning of mp3’s CDs, or video CDs. The idea is make the user buy the full version software, (the program costs upward of $70), however it does allow the user to burn music CDs. You can also create CD’s from hard drive images and directly copy CDs from another drive.
I then proceeded to test the speed of the drive. The first CD that I burned was a copy of 650mb-block file. Test times logged under four minutes, respectable at 40X. To test the 2-megabyte buffer, I also ran Internet Explorer 6, Windows Media Player and a Music Conversion program at the same time. (Please note that the performance of the drive depends greatly on the speed of ones computer, as well as the operating system). I expected a buffer over run (an error that occurs because of insufficient data flowing to the drive) with such a small buffer, however the program ran smoothly, even at 40X.
My next test was of the Format Utility, a program that allows the user to directly drag files onto the CD-R or CD-RW as many times that he or she wants. The CD-RW speed was satisfactory: I was backed up a 450-Mb file in 6 minutes at 10x. However, I encountered problems with the CD-R media that I used: after copying files to the CD I had to shutdown my computer because the drive would not open.
I encountered my biggest problem with drive when I tried to upgrade it. After upgrading the hardware, I had to upgrade the software I received with it in order for it to work. Once I went to Memorex.com, I was able to get the more up to date drivers and resolve the issue. This was very time consuming and involved many phone calls to customer service.
The bottom line is this: if you plan to do bare-bone burning, this is a good drive to buy. I paid below $80 for this drive when 40x was the fastest speed on the market, and this price has probably dropped by now. You get what you pay for, and that is a middle of the line drive with middle of the line software.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 79.99
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
tito4life
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Member: Collins Munro
Location: Brooklyn, NY, United States
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 1 member
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