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Combo Drives

Many drives you find are combo drives. Most will even burn CDs AND DVDs.

If you get a quality brand, they work just fine.
It's your money, but I'd just get a combo drive and save.
 
alright, will get combo drive, but is there a better brand for around the same price? i barely even burn cd's. i doubt i'd ever burn a dvd.

Thanks for the info
 
LiteOns aren't as good as they used to be (perhaps they've gotten back into shape as it looks like the user ratings on Newegg on a couple of their drives are pretty good). I'd probably look for a LG (Lucky Goldstar) or Samsung combo drive. But the DVD burners are so cheap now it hardly pays to settle for less. Benq 1600 series and NEC are quite popular now in the DVD burners.
. I'm a fan of Plextor and Newegg has their 740A (very similar to the Benq 1640) on sale for $60. after rebate. It's a full retail kit.

.bh.
 

I'm not trying to sound stupid, but for about 10-15 dollars more, you can just get a DVD-RW drive that will be much faster and even more efficient because of new optical technology architecture.

If you're new to CD-burning, wait until you write to a DVD.
 
Originally posted by: fire400

I'm not trying to sound stupid, but for about 10-15 dollars more, you can just get a DVD-RW drive that will be much faster and even more efficient because of new optical technology architecture.

If you're new to CD-burning, wait until you write to a DVD.
Click to expand...

For $10 more, you can get a nice NEC DVD burner that burns both CDs and DVDs:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827152058

For about a quarter more than the NEC, you can get a nice Pioneer DVD burner:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827129164

Trust me, it's worth it. Go with the full-on CD/DVD burning combo drive 🙂
 
The requirement for a dvd burner are higher than a cd burner. Maybe his computer isn't new enough.
I want to set up a basic internet surfer for my mom and it won't be enough to run a dvd burner but good enough to burn cds.
 
The requirement for a dvd burner are higher than a cd burner.
Click to expand...
Actually you're wrong... the 'requirement' for DVD burning is higher then burning CD's... the requirement to have the drive in your system is no differant at all.

For $10-bucks, he's still better off getting a DVD-burner "just in case" he wants to do some DVD burning down the road. Brands I would recomend are NEC and Samsung.
 
Originally posted by: Wolfshanze
The requirement for a dvd burner are higher than a cd burner.
Click to expand...
Actually you're wrong... the 'requirement' for DVD burning is higher then burning CD's... the requirement to have the drive in your system is no differant at all.

For $10-bucks, he's still better off getting a DVD-burner "just in case" he wants to do some DVD burning down the road. Brands I would recomend are NEC and Samsung.
Click to expand...

Actually YOU are wrong 😉. The Nec DVD burner has min. specs 0f 800MHz and recommended 1.0 GHz while the LiteOn cd combo drive has minimum specs of 166 MHz.

 

I'm with Wolf... The requirements are for the DVD burning software, not the drive... If you don't burn DVDs then you can get away with a lot less. The drive hardware itself has no more requirements than a CD or DVD-ROM drive - until you load the burning software.

.bh.
 
Originally posted by: RKS
Originally posted by: Wolfshanze
The requirement for a dvd burner are higher than a cd burner.
Click to expand...
Actually you're wrong... the 'requirement' for DVD burning is higher then burning CD's... the requirement to have the drive in your system is no differant at all.

For $10-bucks, he's still better off getting a DVD-burner "just in case" he wants to do some DVD burning down the road. Brands I would recomend are NEC and Samsung.
Click to expand...

Actually YOU are wrong 😉. The Nec DVD burner has min. specs 0f 800MHz and recommended 1.0 GHz while the LiteOn cd combo drive has minimum specs of 166 MHz.
Click to expand...
No YOU! are wrong 😉 😉 those requirements are meaningless for using the DVD-ROM functions, they only apply to DVD burning. Even then they are probably overstated and only apply to the highest burning speed. With burn-proof that 166 MHz could most likely burn a DVD at 1x - 4x.
 
Actually YOU are wrong . The Nec DVD burner has min. specs 0f 800MHz and recommended 1.0 GHz while the LiteOn cd combo drive has minimum specs of 166 MHz.
Click to expand...
As has been pointed out multiple times... sorry RKS, but you're still wrong. Those are software requirements for burning DVDs, not hardware requirements having the drive read anything (and requirements for burning CDs are less then DVDs). You could put the drive in an old Pentium-1 and it would read CDs just fine.

In either case, he should just get a DVD-burning combo drive... they are SOOOO cheap these days!
 
I got email responses from both NEC and LiteOn. They will be revising their white papers on the respective optical offerings to correctly state the minimal hardware requirements. 🙂 I'm not making the specs up for arguments sake I just read the manuf.'s requirements.

Anyway NEC and LiteOn both apologized emphatically for misleading the end users.

Yeah I guess you guys are correct, you can physically install any optical drive in any system but if it can not do the job it is designed to do is it worth even paying an extra penny for a feature that won't be used?

In the OP's case he has the minimum specs to use a dvd burner so the point is moot. In my mom's case; a 500 MHz computer will be sufficient with just a cdrw or combo drive.
 
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