Plextor Plexwriter--a cheap quickie!
Written: Oct 31 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast speeds, easy installation, good price, nice software selection
Cons: None
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| boden11's Full Review: Plextor PlexWriter 8/4/32 CD-RW Burner |
After nearly 3 years of promising myself that I would get a CD-R/W drive I finally did. With a special from Buy.com (including $30 off a $150 purchase, free shipping and a killer initial price) I decided to go for the Plextor 8/4/32. I received the drive in record time (I ordered it Monday, and on Wednesday the UPS guy came knock-knock-knocking) and tore off my computer case to install the sucker.
Installation
As with all IDE interface devices, the Plextor was in general pretty easy to install. Personally it took me over 90 minutes, but that's because of my complex system setup (I already had 2 CD-ROM drives installed and 2 hard drives both with bootup manager software. I had to actually move around both of my hard drives and the remaining CD-ROM drive and rip out my garbage Toshiba drive. If you have trouble installing this drive, remember: It NEEDS to be the Master (IDE runs on 2 channels each with a Master/Slave setup). This means if you already have one CD-ROM and 1 HDD, put the HDD as master on one of the channels and run the Plextor as master on the other.
For more indepth information about installing CD-R/W drives, read my epinion awhile back about the TDK veloCD drive, or the one on Buying a CD-R/W drive.
After shuffling my hard drives and CD-ROM drives everything was detected during bootup (Plug and Play BIOS) and Windows was off and running. Windows 98: 2nd Edition installed a driver for the drive automatically, and then it was just a matter of installing the included software.
Bundled Software
As with most drives, Plextor's PlexWriter came with Adaptec's Easy CD Creater v4.0. This allows for easy creation of Music CD's (straight from MP3 files vs raw WAVs), Data CD's and CD's from image files. Plextor also installs a 'MVP 2000' program which takes over all media formats (nearly). This player takes over MP3's, AVIs, MPGs, WAVs and more, kinda like a Microsoft Media Player. However for those who wish to switch back unassocating MVP 2000 with those formats is quite a breeze.
Also, the Plextor Drive comes with Adaptec's Direct CD which allows you to use a CD-R or CD-RW as a 2nd (or 3rd...or even 4th for some of you people) hard drive. It uses a proprietary UDF format which will most likely be unreadable in other people's drives (unless you finalize and close the CD when you are finished writing/deleting to it).
Installation of the programs was quick and painless. However, like other CD R/W drives, I again noticed that Adaptec's Video and Picture CD Creator were NOT included as part of the package. So like any good boy I quickly went and downloaded a shareware version of Nero (www.nero.com) which I recommend highly for more advanced computer users.
Use of the Drive
This drive is QUICK! With an 8x recording speed (and 4x re-write) a full cd takes about 9 minutes to burn! The drive also has a large internal buffer (4 MB) which strangely enough is LARGER than the buffer included on the 12x Plextor. Read speeds are also quick, with an average access time of about 170 ms. Unfortunately with my slow system (Pentium 200) my read speeds aren't as fast as I'd hoped. (Like 17x for Data, 13x for Audio and 9x for Audio RIP). This is mainly due to my slow processor, and if I upgraded to something decent I'd achieve the 32x advertised on the drive.
Also, because of my slow system for burning Audio CDs straight from MP3 I can only record at 4x, otherwise the drive burns quicker than my CPU can decode MP3 audio! For other burning the drive is able to burn at full speed tho. Plextor does not lose any credit for this, as this is a result of my computer and not because of any problem with the drive.
Conclusion
At an MSRP in the mid $100 range, there has been NO better time to get a CD-R/W. The Plextor is an insanely fast drive for the money and very reliable (only one coaster so far from trying to burn an Audio CD from MP3 at 8x). Installation is simple, the software provided is very nice and easy to use. If you don't have a CD-R/W drive and thinking of getting one...look no further.
Recommended:
Yes
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boden11
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Location: California
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boden11 loves gambling...errr investing in the stock market and and doing his own taxes
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