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| Date Reviewed: 09/07/2004 |
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Strengths: Plextor brand. SATA interface.
Weaknesses: Price relative to IDE interfaces. No dual layer support (especially given price)
Summary: 2004-09-18 08:47:40 This drive is outstanding. Quiet and fast with support for 12X writing (good luck finding media yet). Only drawback is no support for dual layer writing, but this is still an excellent drive from what is one of the premier drive manufacturers.
The SATA interface really shines during installation of large programs (such as MS Office).
I installed on an Intel 915GAVL motherboard with Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz 530 processor and had no compatibility issues. (I had read somewhere there were "issues" earlier, but this had apparently been corrected.)
Only quirk is problem reading Imation CD-Rs that I had copied some files to from another drive. There is a firmware release available and I will be checking to see if this may correct the problem.
09-18-04
The firmware update did not help with the Imation CD-Rs... Plextor's web site does provide a list of recommended media. Stick with those and you should not have any problems. (Note-there are relatively few manufacturers of media- sometimes different "brands" are actually manufactured by the same company and should therefore provide for the same compatibility. There are programs available that will provide manufacturer information for CD-Rs)
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| Date Reviewed: 09/23/2004 |
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Strengths: VERY fast and quiet
Weaknesses: No dual-layer support
Summary: This drive is fast! It is only a few dollars more than the EIDE version, so I highly recommend it to anyone with SATA capability, especially if you have a SATA hard drive. Everything installs and loads much faster than a standard EDIE drive. Plus, this drive has an 8MB buffer, whereas all others have only 2MB. This decreases the instances of "coasters." In fact, I haven't had one bad burn yet. Also worth noting is the lack of audio out ports on the back of the drive. If the price drops on this drive or if they add dual-layer support, I will consider buying a second one.
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| Date Reviewed: 07/17/2005 |
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Strengths: Fast.
Weaknesses: Compatibility.
Summary: 2005-07-21 11:59:38 I didn't realize it was a SATA interface drive and most optical drives are IDE. After going to the Plextor website and reading around, I've heard other stories with this device causing problems. The compatibility list on Plextor is very meager. They didn't even test the newer motherboards.
For the price of 60 dollars after rebate, I thought it was a good deal but with my computer booting up erratically from working to non-working, I'd avoid this drive unless you're 100% sure it works with your motherboard.
Any CD's I burned with this worked just fine so its functionality is great, but compatibility is not.
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| Date Reviewed: 07/12/2005 |
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Strengths: 8mb buffer, ease of install, good burns.
Weaknesses: dual layer burning speeds are a bit slow.
Summary: 2005-10-23 22:40:48 i bought this to replace my pioneer 109. the plextor burner is a much better drive. i don't generally burn faster than 6x for most of my stuff so the allure of 16x (if you've ever owned a dvd burner before you'll know that the difference between 12x & 16x is negligible to non-existant).
dual layer dvd burning has not become affordable to the mainstream yet & supplies are still limited, so this drive's only shortcoming (IMHO), 4x DL burning, is not a big deal
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| Date Reviewed: 06/22/2005 |
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Strengths: Fast burn speeds, lots of options to tweak, SATA
Weaknesses: None
Summary: Burns most of my 8X media at 12X with no problems. Costs much less than the 16X version that has double layer. IMO, double layer is a waste of money because the disks cost so much. By the time DL becomes affordable, one of the new storage technologies will have taken over.
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| Date Reviewed: 05/17/2005 |
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Strengths: Plextor reputation,SATA interface
Weaknesses: none so far
Summary: I'm in the process of changing all my drives to the new SATA interface, so this drive is another move in that direction.
I find these drives are very stable and not likely or prone to errors. You won't be making any coasters, or trying to figure
out what's going wrong.
In the past when I was (and still am) using Plextor SCSI drives, I found the factory service and support to be top notch.
It would be my opinion Plextor is one of the top optical drive makers.
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| Date Reviewed: 03/13/2005 |
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Strengths: Easy Install, Rock solid burning at high rate of speed. Simple to use, What more could you want?
Weaknesses: OK No Dual Layer, but then again i do not need dual layer. OK it is not 16x, but then again it is much less than a 16x burner.
Summary: Right off the bat the manuals were well written, and made it very easy to understand everything. Hardware and Software installation was easy and simple ion windows XP Pro. I was up and running in less than 15 minutes. I had my first disc burned a few minutes later than that.
If you are looking for a great performing DVD +/-r than this is the one you should go with.
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| Date Reviewed: 01/17/2005 |
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Strengths: very quiet
Weaknesses: none
Summary: very quiet very fast very stable awesome features it has the ability to strecth ur cd or dvd so it can hold moresongs or files. its awesome. very easy setup and itlooksgreat when u install it on ur pc.
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| Date Reviewed: 01/03/2005 |
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Strengths: Very stable
Weaknesses: Don't know yet
Summary: 2005-01-03 23:39:00 It detects burning speed for the cd/dvd very fast and accurate. Even when I didn't use the name-brand cdr, it still burns very well and detects the real speed of the cdr.
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