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Are external USB CDRW's any good?

R

Relayer

Diamond Member
Thinking about getting one for my niece who has a laptop and wants to burn her MP3's to audio CD's. I know, I know SCSI is the best. Like I said, she has a laptop. Are the USB external's disapointing? Do they get the job done?

Thanks
 
At the office I have some Sony 4x4x6 USB external burners and they are quite nice. They get the job done... 🙂
 
My friend has a 4x sony usb burner and it looks like a scsi drive that has a scsi->usb drive attached to it. He's pretty satisfied with it and never had a bad burn yet. Those burners are however alot more expensive than regular ones so you're paying a premium since they're not all that mainstream
 
They're great as far as ease of hookup and portability. A USB version might be great for a laptop user. An added bonus would be the drive would be easily transferrable to another machine and back again. The fun never ends! 😉
 
My Dad has a Mitsumi 4802TU that works with CloneCD and Nero in both Win98SE and W2K. He doesn't even mess with his other burner.
--Randy
 
I have the Iomega you are referring to. Easy install, nice software packagge, never a bad burn yet. And ive made approximately 40 audio CD's...
 
If you're gonna use it only for a Laptop, and expect
to use it for more than the occasional backup, I'd recommend
getting a PCMCIA SCSI adaptor and using an external SCSI drive.
If not, you're going to be limited to USB speeds, which means
maximum 4x writes and lots of cpu overhead to boot...

If you're only going to use it occasionally as a backup device,
then you can probably live with a maximum 4x burn (and inability
to do anything else while burning), and then why not?

Of course, the SCSI adaptor route also provides you with other
possibilities with respect to SCSI devices...

If you're going to use it on a desktop PC, I would DEFINITELY
go with SCSI. You can get a SCSI card/drive for around $200 or
less if you look around--the same price as a USB drive. And you'll
get better speed and lower CPU utilization.

Unless this is for what I call a "granma", that is, someone whose
eyes would glaze over if you tried to explain what a SCSI card
is and how you need to open their computer to install it. In that
case, buy a USB device for (your own) peace of mind.

Kwad
 
HP has a burner especially for laptops. Its about the size of a portable cd player, 4x4x24. Uses what appears to be a SCSI interface. Comes with a PCMCIA card. Recommended this for my cousin who seems to really like it. Should cost arount $300.
 
I have a Freecom portable. I could use an (expensive) parallel, PCMCIA, or USB connector. I chose the parallel. Cheaper and works with my 486s.

*the parallel connector is like £27, the USB £35. It calls itself in system properties a kind of SCSI but isn't really AFAIK.
 
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