Nero's Burning Rome . . . ah, ROM.
Written: Aug 28 '02 (Updated Sep 24 '02)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Easy to use, comprehensive burning capabilities.
Cons: None worth mentioning, except for the possibly too-technical manual.
The Bottom Line: If you're going to be burning a lot of those silver thingies, why not do it right the first time?
|
|
|
| counsel's Full Review: Ahead Software Nero 5.5 Full Version for PC (NERO5... |
"Leave no shiny silver area unviolated" was my slogan when I received my first CD read-write drive - a humble Sony 8x writer, by the way, and was I excited about making data CDs, picture CDs, and flouting the desires of NARAS and the RIAA* with my music mixes? You bet I was.
This CD-burner was attached to my new computer. It's now over a year old - it's an 800 mHz Micron with 128 MB ram (now expanded to 394 meg) and running Win ME (gag). My Micron was supplied, out of the box, with a basic version of Adaptec's Easy CD Creator. This was a boon to someone like me, who had never created, much less burned, a CD before, and I looked forward to many happy hours of CD creating. Or burning. Whatever.
Until, that is, I set up and used it the first time. The various gleaming coasters** about our beloved home attest to my great success with Easy CD Creator, and I became somewhat flummoxed about the whole idea of taking pieces of data and writing them onto a CD, much less an actual CD "mix" of music. Why should it be so difficult? Doesn't anyone understand that the whole point of having a CD read-write drive is to write stuff onto CDs? Is it such an esoteric thing to derive a program that will actually help your read-write drive do such things? And what in the world were these friggin' buffer errors, anyway?
This was my unfortunate situation for many months following my initial attempts at CD burning. I would break out into flop-sweat when my wife needed to present a lecture at some hospital and wanted me to transcribe her PowerPoint presentation onto a . . . yes, a CD. After much coaster-creation, I learned that if I dropped my speed down to 2x and shut down just about every application, I could get Adaptec's program to burn one little PowerPoint file onto my gleaming greenish-silver blank disk. But for heaven's sake don't ask for anything else. I sat there the whole time, looking for the dreaded dialogue box indicating I'd created yet another coaster (those bloody buffer overflow messages).
It was at that point that I did two things. First, some of you may remember the memory glut of a few months back. I took advantage of the situation and obtained 256 meg of cheap RAM and stuck it in my Micron. Secondly, I decided to look for a better CD-burning program.
Years ago, it seems, I read JMB623's review on a new program for burning CDs he called "Nero." He seemed quite pleased with the program though he described it as somewhat utilitarian and not all that user-friendly. Only recently I decided to investigate that program, and my, hasn't Nero grown up since then. It's grown to version Five Dot Five, to be precise.
Installation occurred the way such things are supposed to occur - with a minimal amount of thinking and input from me, thank you very much. The Nero CD auto-started when I inserted it, giving me four push-button choices - install Nero 5.5, install their NeroMediaPlayer doodad, install their inCD Packet-Writing doomahitchie, or Exit. To install the packet thing I would have to uninstall Adaptec's program, and I was simply too lazy to do that just then.
So I started with Nero 5.5, which was the whole point of this thing after all. I clicked all the defaults and just let the CD do its installation thing. No hang-ups, no weird messages, no blue screens - it was as smooth as silk. You do have to enter a numerical code while installing. This code is on your packaging.
Nero's manual calls for a minimum system configuration of - get this - a 486 processor or higher with a clock speed of at least 33 Mhz, a minimum of 8 MB of RAM and, if you have a SCSI RW drive, it must have WINASPI support (IDE drives are OK as is).
May I suggest to you, dear reader, that anything near this minimum configuration will create, effectively, a virtual wall-full of coasters for the amusement and admiration of your guests. Nero 5.5 will require a bundle of memory - I was getting buffer overflow errors with an 800 Mhz machine at 8x with 128 Mb of RAM and only my virus program running. I don't have an exact suggestion for the sort of system you need, but now, with 394 MB of RAM and running Nero 5.5, I can have other programs running and still get a smooth burn at my writer's top speed. My safety margin, then, was somewhere in that range, and while an extremely careful and prudent person might actually burn a CD while close to the designated minimums, the hassle, I submit, would not be worth it. Load up on capacity, folks.
Next, I decided to do an initial test by copying my Nero CD and creating, as the U.S. federal Copyright Act calls it, my federally-endowed-and-allowed "archive copy." I ran Nero, and first thing that happened was a little wizard-like program popped up, asking if I wanted to copy an entire CD or do it in bits and pieces. I decided to use the wizard, do the entire-copy thing, and let it ride. Nero made sure I selected my read-write drive's speed. It defaulted to its top 8x speed, which I know is slow these days, so just keep your jeers to yourself. Other settings were shown as well (jeezama christmas, don't ask me what they are; I'll get conniptions of the tongue). And then, once I expressed my satisfaction with the settings, I told it to begin. At top speed, no less.
As I sat there with baited breath, waiting for the coaster announcement, a new dialogue box appeared with a progress bar and informed me it was doing a Simulation of the write process. Hunh?? A simulation? What's up with that? Did I get a simulated copy at the end?
Actually, if you fail to remove the check mark next to the "Simulation" choice prior to commencing the copying process, Nero goes through the entire process once without actually writing anything to determine whether your read-write drive is capable of doing the operation at the requested speed without problems. Given my insecurity about this whole thing anyway, the simulation thing was probably the right choice, but at that moment I wanted a real copy - I didn't want Nero to act like it was really doing something when it wasn't.
My frustration was unfounded, though, since once the simulation was complete, Nero then went straight to the actual copying process. Because of the simulation, I now knew exactly how long it would take to make the copy, what to expect during the process - and mainly, I knew that the whole thing was going to turn out OK, since the simulation went without mishap. No coaster this time, bay-bee.
Now that I had a backup copy of Nero, I wanted to play with its audio features, and to do that I had to invoke Nero's File Browser and Nero's Compilation Window. I could use the Wizard if I wanted to do a straight copy of one audio CD onto a blank, but what if I wanted to do a mix? To do that I have to invoke the Compilation Window. If that sounds like a mouthful, it's only because a picture (i.e., the window itself) is worth a thousand words, and it's much simpler to look at and operate than it is to try and explain it all (without pictures, anyway - blast this non-HTML environment).
Nevertheless, I'll point out the main features here. The essential ingredient in this, of course, is the CD-ROM Compilation Window, in which, as you might suspect, various computer files - whether data files or folders - are compiled for later transcribing onto a CD. And that's exactly what you do. By opening Nero's File Browser OR Window's Explorer, you can drag-and-drop the files you want on your CD into the Compilation Window and rearrange them any way you wish. Whether it is a single file or an entire folder, just drop it into the Compilation Window, and there you are - it's ready to burn, baby. You can delete any file or folder in the Compilation Window, or change its name so that's it's named differently on the burned CD than it was at its source. Isn't technology wonderful.
What's more, if you use Nero's File Browser instead of Window's Explorer, you can actually filter files as you drag whole folders over - for instance, you can tell the File Browser to filter out everything but *.MP3 files in that folder, and then copy the whole folder over - it will contain nothing but the *.MP3 files that were in the original folder. You can tell it to exclude a particular file type the same way. My, but I'm impressed.
And all that was to say this - to do audio CDs, Nero has an Audio-CD Compilation Window which is much like the CD-ROM window described above, but with the following differences: You can't create a typical audio CD unless the music files are available in WAV format with a 44.1 kHz sampling rate and 16 bit stereo. If that's confusing to you, well, it is to me too - I just wanta know how to get the music onto my CD, thank you so much, and will you just tell me how to do it without the electronic engineering and acoustics lessons?
Anyway, you move these files into the Audio Compilation window. When you do, fun stuff such as track, title and length info is displayed in the lower part of the window. You even have a PLAY button to ensure that yes, that was really Tom Ames' Prayer*** you stuck in there and not Oops, I Did It Again. If you want, select all the titles in the Compilation Window and play them in sequence, all before burning your CD. And then change the sequence, if you don't like how they go together.
Nero 5.5 also allows the compilation of MP3 CDs. You can also create a "Mixed-Mode-CD" with its own Compilation Window. A Mixed-Mode CD is simply a CD with both audio and data tracks. Many game CDs are mixed-mode CDs.
All of the above CDs are usually created in one burning session. Nero also allows multisession CD burns, and has a special Multisession Compilation Window for this process.
Once you've finished sticking files in the Compilation Window, it's time to burn 'em, and that's where all the simulating and progress bars come in. Nero recommends that you do a simulation with each burn to ensure that there won't be problems with the burn itself. Frankly, after a couple of burns, you're going to get a feel of your computer's capabilities using this software and you'll have an idea whether a simulation is necessary every time you burn a CD, or not. A simulation doubles the time it takes to burn a CD. I don't do simulations any more, for the most part.
Nero provides you with a Write CD dialogue box to facilitate your burning, um, experience. There's tabs across the top that allow you to add information to your CD in addition to that you've already designated in your Compilation Window. Go through the check boxes, choose what you want to do, then press the "Write" button on the upper right side of the box to get things going. In order, Nero performs a Write Speed test, the Simulation, the actual writing, and finalizing the CD. Unchecking any of these options will eliminate that step from the process. I usually uncheck "Simulate" and on rare occasions I'll uncheck "Finalize CD" if I want to continue the recording session later. Once I've clicked "finalize" I can't record on that CD; it's done - so be careful.
One note worth mentioning - even though you switch on "Simulation" you'll see the RW-drive light come on. The difference is the laser is switched off; no actual writing is taking place. The laser is switched on for actual burning.
The burn operation takes you through each process of the burning procedure, with a progress bar marking the time used and estimated time left. Unlike the simulation, Nero will not allow you to interrupt the burning process - the CANCEL button is grayed out. And for good reason - unless you want another coaster, the burn process must be completed for the CD to be useable.
The User manual is on the CD in both Word and PDF formats, and in various languages. If you're going to print it, make sure you pick the right language. Can't emphasize that enough, as the manual is extensive and goes into considerable detail into things you never wanted to learn about CD burning (ISO 9660, anyone?). The manual prints out to 130 pages, so load up the printer and check your ink cartridges if you're going that route.
Nero is full of features I've barely touched on, or not mentioned at all, but I trust you now have a good idea of what to expect with this program for basic CD-violating. Burn ones and zeroes at your whim; Nero makes it possible, folks. Burning CDs is fun, now, and I haven't made a single coaster since switching to Nero Five Dot Five. Violating silver-green disks is one of my favorite pastimes - one I recommend to you.
*RIAA = Recording Industry Association of America
**If you haven't learned - from your endless stream of AOL disks - about the furniture-protection capabilities of CDs, I am here to tell you: they beat those expensive foo-foo coasters you get at the import store all to heck.
*** From Robert Earl Keen's Gringo Honeymoon album.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
counsel
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Member: Dwight
Location: Houston
Reviews written: 117
Trusted by: 500 members
About Me:
If I smell flowers, I start looking around for a coffin.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.