Burn, baby burn!!
Written: Sep 17 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Reliable,
great software bundle
Cons: Slow burning speed,
not compatible with all CD-R, CD-RW disks,
a bit bulky
The Bottom Line: In short, if you can afford $175 dollars or so for a burner I would recommend the Iomega Zip CD CD-RW drive because of its reliable performance.
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| WashUGuy2002's Full Review: Iomega ZipCD CD-RW Burner |
I bought my Iomega Zip CD burner a few months ago because I figured I wanted to back up important files and make music CD's. I knew very little about burners and did a little research before my purchase. If you are considering buying this burner, consider the following:
Internal/External
If you have a laptop or want to use a burner with more than one computer, you need an external burner. For desktop computers, I would recommend buying an internal burner (they are cheaper and burn a lot faster).
If you have decided you need an external burner, I would recommend buying the Iomega Zip CD CD-RW drive. So far it has performed well and has been easy to use.
That being said, I wish I knew more about this burner before I bought it; so I will share some of the secrets they are reluctant to tell you...
Compatibility
It's a good idea to check with your computer's manufacturer before you buy this product. As you might have read in other reviews or heard from other people, this product seems to be incompatible with certain computers. I actually took a chance and bought it, knowing my computer was relatively old...I guess I lucked out on that one.
Speed
This burner claims to write at 4x, rewrite at 4x and read at 6x. Usually you can burn anything on your hard drive at these speeds. However, keep in mind these are the maximum speeds. It's quite likely you will have to burn some things at 2x, maybe even 1x. This applies more to older computers because if you have an older CD-ROM drive, it may be incapable of extracting sound files at a high quality at 4x speeds. One other thing to note here is that the burner burns at 4x, 2x, and 1x speeds (I guess there is no thing such as 3x). (For those that don't know what 4x, 2x, and 1x mean, they are the recording speeds for the burner. If something burns at 4x, it should burn a full 650 MB/74 min CD in 18.5 min and a 700 MB/80 min CD in 20 min. A 2x burn will take twice as long and 1x will take 4 times as long as 4x.)
Performance
As I mentioned earlier, I have been pleased with the performance of this burner. It is rumored to burn a bit slower than comparable drives, but it gets the job done. What may not be known is that Iomega has a list of tested CD-R and CD-RW disks that are known to work with this drive. Use anything else at your own risk. I have noticed some disks cut into the 2MB buffer overrun consistently, while others don't use the buffer at all. To ensure a successful burn, it's a good idea to turn off all screensavers and antivirus software (don't forget to turn them back on later though!).
Other Features
One thing I did not know was that you can use this drive just as you you would use a floppy drive. In other words, you can save or "drag and drop" files onto both CD-R disks and CD-RW disks using Adaptec's Direct CD. Before you can do this, you must format the disk you intend to use, and that can take from up to a few minutes for CD-R's and 15 minutes or so for CD-RW's. Doing this decreases each disk's capacity, but I'd trade a little capacity for this feature any day.
Finally, this drive comes with bundled software: Adaptec DirectCD, Adaptec Easy CD Creator, Iomega Quik Sync (30 day trial version), and MusicMatch Jukebox Plus for PC's and MGI PhotoSuite Mac and Adaptec Toast for Mac's. The User's Manual can be installed from a CD onto your hard drive, but there is no booklet or hard copy enclosed with the drive.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 50 on sale
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
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Epinions.com ID:
WashUGuy2002
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Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 1 member
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