paiged's Full Review: Hewlett Packard Plus 8100i CD-RW Burner
This is one of the easiest peripheral installations I have done. The software provided by HP scans your system, lets you choose where to place the drive, and then tells you how to set the jumpers on each drive.
HP also has software to format CR-RW disks in the background. This allows you to use the drive in only 5 minutes. Writing, however, is limited to only that portion of the drive which has already been formatted, so writing a large file to the disk can take a long time until formatting is complete.
The drive has only a 2MB buffer, but I have only had one buffer overrun, and that was caused by a disk read error, and had nothing to do with the drive. The software also allows you to change the write speed, either 1X, 2X, or 4X.
HP has software updates available for the drive and software on its website, so updates are just a download away.
Why this drive? I looked at a lot, and this seemed to me to have the best quality, capability, and software. The higher price is worth it.
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