SUMMARY: High speed CD-RW burners are becoming increasingly more affordable each day as they gain in popularity. Follow Cameron "Sov" Johnson as he takes a look at a 48/16/48 speed burner from OptoRite. You can pick one of these kits up for $100 US, but does it actually work well and most importantly, at its marked speeds? Read on and find out It might just make the perfect Christmas gift for the geek in your family!
Before we take a look at the unit itself, we thought we would explain a bit about the technologies behind the unit that makes it a good contender.
Technology Overview
EXACT-Rec
EXACT-Rec or Enhanced eXtracting & Adapting Control Technology for Recording monitors the buffer flow rate and keeps the CD-RW unit from those dreaded buffer under-runs that were common when the drive becomes faster in its writing capabilities than the hard disk can supply the data, especially with IDE CD-RW and IDE HDDs, this was very common.
AWSS
AWSS or Advanced Weighting Suspension System works to reduce vibration noise from the CD drive when the unit has the CD at full RPM. Without this technology, the CD-RW would sound like a vacuum cleaner inside your PC. With silent PCs now moving into fashion, it is important to have your CD drives as quiet as possible.
Smart Burn
Using this clever technology, the drive is able to automatically check which CD-R or CD-RW media you are attempting to use and increase or decrease burn speeds accordingly to what the drive thinks the media is able to safely handle.
Features
Package and Contents
The box for the CD-RW unit is pretty much a standard CD-ROM sized box. With the name and blue and white colourings on the box it doesnt stand out much from any normal CD box. When you open the box and unpack it all you see what you have gotten.
Inside is your CD-RW unit, user manual, Nero Burning ROM CD, a pack of mounting screws and an analogue audio port to sound Card cable. Most companies to date that make CD-R(W) units are supplying Nero, as it is one of the most widely used and simplest to use recording programs available.
The Drive Physical Appearance
The drive itself is a rather stylish with its curved front tray cover. Its amazing what can be done with a standard rectangle box.
Top right on the drive shows the burners speed rating.
Bottom right of the unit shows the Eject button as well as the CD Audio play/Skip button.
The final shot shows the back of the drive. Pretty standard with IDE connector, four pin power plug, Master/Slave jumper as well as Digital and Analogue audio out ports for connection to sound cards.
