I'm a CD burning newbie, and I need some advice...

[BarabraWalterZ]

I recently got a 16/10/40 Lite On CD burner (I am supposed to get it the 26th) and I have some questions....

1. What kind of CD's would you get for it? Is there a lot of difference between one brand or another?
2. If I'm burning a CD-RW for the first time, will it burn at 16x or 10x?
3. Will using this drive as my main CDrom severly shorten the life of it (I've heard that it can)?
4. Can I simply drag and drop files onto the drive if a CD is in the drive, or do I have to burn through specific hardware.
5. I think my burner comes with Nero and Easy CD creator, and my MP3 CD player (Which I also haven't gotten yet) comes with burning software of it's own. Which do you think would be the best to use to make MP3 CD's for my MP3 CD player, AND music CD's for my car CD player?

I guess that's it. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Prince of Persia]

Congrats on the purchase I just got one of these and going to be installing it today.

It comes with 1 CDR, 1 CDRW.

CDRW only write at a max of 10x, the CDR on the other hand can write at 16x.

The package comes with Nero, installation screws, and a sound cable to your sound card.

If you want to have drag/drop functionability you need to get DirectCD or some other form of packet writing software for CDRW. You'll need to get ahold of directcd if your going to want to do drag/drop copying.

As for what type of CD's to get, I'm not sure about that one. I heard Imation is a good/cheap company.

 

[Siddhartha]

I have been using bulk CD-Rs with about an 1% rejection rate, that is my Flexwriter rejecting the disc. I have not used enough branded CD-Rs to make a comparison with the bulk products.

 

[gopunk]

1. it's not so much the brand on the cdr as it is the actual manufacturer (the label is just the reseller). there was a huge discussion about this on the openars forum: http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?q=Y&a=tpc&s=50009562&f=24609792&m=8890992922&p=1. people seem to like the taiyo yuden manufacturer.

5. in my experience, nero is the best burner. you may find that you like others better, try them all!

 

[BarabraWalterZ]

Thanks for the info guys, and Bumpola!

 

[AAman]

actually, nero now has a free downloadable program for cdrws,
InCD or something like that, available at their website, ahead.de
(havent tried it yet)