Which DVD Burner?

[ath50]

I'm looking for a cheap but reliable DVD/CD Burner for occasional burning, I don't burn stuff very often, so I'm not looking for an intense one.

Last time I bought a computer was in 2000 and I got a DVD/CD reading drive and a separate CD burner drive. Is it better to get the complete combo now, or is there some sort of performance loss by including everything together? The #1 usage of this drive would be to read CDs, and ocassionally read DVDs/Burn DVDs or CDs. Would a separate CD/DVD reading drive be better?

Whats the best burner for the price? On newegg the $70 NEC looks nice...

What software will I be needing for burning CDs and DVDs? The NEC one is OEM, so will I need to buy separate programs just for burning, or is there reliable freeware out there?

 

[BlueWeasel]

Rumor has it that frequently reading CDs/DVDs using DVD burners can prematurately damage the laser. But who knows how soon? 6 months? 2 years?

If money is an issue and assuming you're not doing extreme amounts of reading, then I would think a single DVD burner would be fine. However, with DVD-ROM drive being so cheap these days, you could go with the $70 NEC drive and a DVD-ROM drive for around $100 shipped.

I've read good things about that particular NEC drive. I use Lite-on drives mostly, but the NEC is a good choice.

When it comes to DVD burning, Nero is the way to go. I'd go with a retail drive that comes with it if the price isn't too much more. You might try looking in the Hot Deals forum, as I've seen deals on Nero6 in the last month or so.

 

[ath50]

Thanks for the reply

I just grabbed the 4 year old DVD/CD drive out my old computer and its a Toshiba 12x/40x drive model SD-M1402. Like the one guru3d reviewed a while ago here I might use that in my new rig rather than relying on the combo drive for everything.

The review says it doesn't run quite as fast with CDs compared to the generic CD drive he uses, but then again I'm not that worried about speed since the rig I will be building will mostly be for gaming, and I don't think I'll need to rely on the CD drive much with full installs. Do you think there will be any compatability issues? (like it won't be able to read certain types of DVD media since its 4 years old)

Also the next expensive NEC drive up is a little over $90, and I believe thats because it can do dual layer burning. What exactly is this, some sort of capacity increasing method I am guessing?