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DVD Burner Comparison
mikemuch writes "While you're waiting for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, you may want to check out ExtremeTech's roundup of dual-layer DVD burners. Starting at about $43US, some of them are quite powerful, come with nice bundled software, and are pretty good deals, to boot."
Do not pass go; go directly to the summary page:
Final Thoughts: What to buy
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
One area the article completely ignores is the quality of the burns? They don't mention if they had any troubles playing back anything that was burned on these drives. Compatibility with existing dvd players is a big deal and it would have been nice to see some mention of this in the test. Having the ability to burn a dvd that only half of my friends/family can play twice as fast (or half the cost) is useless.
Why do these kinds of reviews always focus on speed alone? Who cares if it takes a couple of minutes longer to burn a DVD with one drive versus another? It's not like you have to sit there with baited breath as the DVD burns -- you can do other things.
I'd rather see a comparison of noise or rate-of-coaster-production. I recently got a new DVD burner which works rather well as far as speed and reliability, but is way too noisy, even when I'm just playing a DVD with it. I have to use my old DVD-ROM drive for playback.
I guess its harder to test those things, though. You can't just load up some benchmark it let it run.
And still no comments on whether or not the Linux support will be alright. Whether the burner is good or not doesnt matter to me until I know I can run it at home. Am I the only Linux user concerned? Considering Im posting on /., and other /.ers are reading, I imagine not. But I could have missed some major article or something concerning it. Would somebody shed some light for me?
Besides being the least expensive choice in the review, it's also the only model of the four which is supported by K-Probe.
? CategoryId=1
http://www.cdrlabs.com/kprobe/
or
http://www.k-probe.com/
And if you actually care about burners, read the reviews from a quality site that actually reviews virtually all the models, does far more exhaustive tests, and has a very active technical forum. CDR Info.
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Home.aspx
"Starting at about $43US, some of them are [...] pretty good deals, to boot."
I can't speak for other users, but I don't boot from CD enough for booting performance to factor in at all when selecting optical drives. This guy has gotta be some die-hard Windows Me enthusiast.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Over the years, since the early days of CD-Rs to modern DVD-+R, there has been on constant - Taiyo Yuden. Their quality has always been top-notch. The worst that has happend with them has been counterfeiting - so if you can trust the merchant selling you TY discs is selling legitimate product, you can trust that you are getting media of the highest quality.
What you can also count on with TY is that you will pay a premium. But compared to some of the 'name' brands like Sony, or Memorex, etc (some of whom often - but not always - produce batches that are just rebranded TY's) it may still be cheaper to buy the spindles of TY's.
For me, the premium of 10-20 cents per disc is well worth it - I never worry about the stability or longevity of the burns I make with TY media.