Excellent freestanding CDRW unit
Written: Dec 03 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast and Dependable
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: This is an excellent drive. If you have a firewire port then this is the unit of choice. It has a pass-through firewire port too!
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| akjim's Full Review: Yamaha CRW 2200FXZ CD-RW Burner |
This is my first CDRW, purchased after lots of research time. I have had no disappointment nor regrets about having bought it.
The unit comes with a bundle of software which I did not even unwrap, so have no opinion on it. I opted instead to go initially to Roxio's Toast Titanium software (v5.2). This software/hardware combination is the basis for this review.
Out of the box the unit is simple to set up. It is Yamaha's CRW2200E burner mechanism in a firewire enclosure. The unit comes with a short firewire cable and separate power transformer. It is PC and Mac compatible. I am using it on a Mac G4 running system 9.2.2.
Set up was plug and play. No extra extensions required. Just plug it in and turn it on. Being firewire you don't even have to shut down the computer first!
Operation is extremely transparent. It just works. Playback of audio CD's is clean and clear. Data CD's read much quicker than the built-in CD-DVD on my G4. The unit goes to warp speed while reading at 40x. You can really hear that disk spinning! Not that it's horribly noisy ... it sounds like a small fan has been turned on. This high speed noise is only intermittent and is not bothersome. It just sounds unusual at first.
Writing to one-write disks has been excellent. Do be careful to purchase disks rated at or above the 20x write speed of the drive. Using these disks I have burned every audio and data CD at full rated speed (20x).
CDRW is slower, at the promised speed of 10x however. I use these CD's to archive my internal HD and it has done so well. I use Retrospect for backup and this is a drive that works under that software.
I have had this unit about 9 months now so feel pretty confident in it. No problems at all.
This drive has better internal software than it's predecessor the CRW2100 FXZ (CRW2100E). The 2200 has the burn-proof technology while the earlier unit does not. My research suggests this is important. I have not had any coasters that are the drives fault at all!
You should also check out the CRW3200 FXZ which is the follow-on model to this one. My second unit is one of these and it's just as solid and reliable as the 2200.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 179.00
Operating System: Macintosh
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Epinions.com ID:
akjim
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Reviews written: 6
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