Introduction

It wasn't too terribly long ago that the concept of getting an internal CD Burner was a reason to start saving the dollars. After all, the top of the line 4x burners were reaching exorbitant ceiling prices. I can recall seeing Plextor burners for prices in the $300-400 range and this wasn't including the price of media. Add to this the distinct possibility of burning several coasters and you can see that it wasn't your average impulse purchase.

But then things started to get interesting. Everybody started making rewriters that were just a step ahead of the competition. Prices became much more affordable and the development of buffer underrun technologies made things both affordable and reliable. Since media had already started coming down in price too, things were just looking good all over.

Enter TDK, a Japanese company that has been in business since 1935. They have long been manufacturing electronics components, but a few years ago they decided that they could make a better burner then some of the big players. But since everyone was making these things, there had to be something that could be done to make their product stand out from the crowd. So they took up the gauntlet, made some extremely fast optical devices and then put on a fancy blue tray cover to let folks know that they were there.

This brings us to today's contestant, the veloCD 48x16x48 CD-RW. It advertises itself as an Ultra-Speed burner capable of creating DVD compatible videos, recording music and MP3 mixes, and also claims to be easy. Can this TDK drive stand up to the hype? Let's find out!