$35 CD Buners

  • Thread starter Thread starter Insoo
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Insoo

Would a $35, LG 52x24x52 burner not work properly or go out on me in the
near future after I use it? Would it be better to buy a retailed burner for
about $80?
 
Would a $35, LG 52x24x52 burner not work properly or go out on me in the
near future after I use it? Would it be better to buy a retailed burner for
about $80?
Click to expand...

I presume you're talking about an OEM LG 52x24x52 burner. Those are
quite good, and I heartily recommend them. The only thing you won't
get vs the retail version are:

1. Mounting screws. Gotta find small pc screws yourself. Most shops
carry them. They used to give them to you free with a drive, but
these days, you usually have to buy them. Most of the local stores
charge a nickel a piece for the screws -- so add .20 to the price.

2. No internal audio cable. You can use digital audio extraction to
play your CDs if you wish, but if you want to play the CDs via an
analog connection, you'll probably want one of these. The alternative
is to use the audio plug up front, but that looks horrible. Add $4 to
the price.

3. A bit of confusion on the warranty situation. LG seems to have
shifted their terms a bit when it comes to the warranty on the bare
drives. They used to call them OEM, and back then, the warranty was
with the store. With the my last couple of LG drives, the store
called them "bulk" drives, and informed me that the warranty was
through LG. Any problems beyond the 14 day exchange period with the
store, and I had to RMA it myself with LG (same as the retail drive).
Not nearly as convenient, but I get a bit longer warranty. The days
of walking to the corner store and walking home with a replacement the
same day are apparently over.

You *DO* get software with it. Nero 5.5 or 6.0 with newer manufacture
drives, and EasyCD5 with older drives. You can usually see the CD
under the drive in the plastic, and can clearly make out which
software you're getting. The newer drives with Nero don't come with a
full printed manual. The older drives with EasyCD 5 do, but the trade
off is that EasyCD5 is crippled in the older bundle.

Assuming the drive's new and not a refurb, there's really no reason
not to get it.
 
Insoo said:
Would a $35, LG 52x24x52 burner not work properly or go out on me in the
near future after I use it? Would it be better to buy a retailed burner for
about $80?
Click to expand...
I agree with MCheu, LG are great burners. I have two and I have
recommended them to others. All have worked just great.
 
Would a $35, LG 52x24x52 burner not work properly or go out on me in
the near future after I use it? Would it be better to buy a retailed
burner for about $80?
Click to expand...

If you wanted to get a cheap burner, I would go with a LiteOn 52x24x52 for
around $45. Comes with all the mounting stuff, Nero, CD Audio cable,
everything you need.

--
AIM: FrznFoodClerk
email: de_on-lag@co_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services
 
thanks for all the advice guys, I could just use the mounting screws and
audio cable from my existing 8x burner. I'm also looking at an LG DVD/CD RW
combo, for about $70. What good or useful would a DVD burner be?
 
bet you could burn DVD's as well as CDR's
Insoo said:
thanks for all the advice guys, I could just use the mounting screws and
audio cable from my existing 8x burner. I'm also looking at an LG DVD/CD RW
combo, for about $70. What good or useful would a DVD burner be?
Click to expand...
 
thanks for all the advice guys, I could just use the mounting screws
and audio cable from my existing 8x burner. I'm also looking at an LG
DVD/CD RW combo, for about $70. What good or useful would a DVD
burner be?
Click to expand...

It would be good for burning DVDs, but the drive you are looking at is not
a DVD burner. It is a DVD/CDRW combo. That means it can:
Read:
CD
DVD
Burn
CDR
CDRW

--
AIM: FrznFoodClerk
email: de_on-lag@co_cast.net (_ = m)
website: under construction
Need a technician in the south Jersey area?
email/IM for rates/services
 
I'm also looking at an LG DVD/CD RW
combo, for about $70. What good or useful would a DVD burner be?
Click to expand...

There are DVD+/DVD-/DVD-RAM/CD-RW burners around now for about $100.
If that one is not actually a DVD burner, you might want to wait.

The main advantage of a DVD burner - if you're not burning movies of
course - is its potential as a backup media. 4GB media is a lot more
than 650-700MB CD's and makes backing up large hard disks a lot
easier.
 
thanks for all the advice guys, I could just use the mounting screws and
audio cable from my existing 8x burner. I'm also looking at an LG DVD/CD RW
combo, for about $70. What good or useful would a DVD burner be?
Click to expand...

I presume by *combo* that you mean a DVD reader with CD-RW burning
capability. Those aren't the same as DVD burners.

The biggest drawback to going with a combo drive is the speed. They
tend to have slower CD read speeds (even if the specs say otherwise)
than a CD-RW drive. If you want to watch DVD movies on your computer,
fine, but if you don't, I'm not sure the speed trade off is worth it
for DVD read capability.

As for DVD burners? With a DVD decoder card or software decoder,
you'll be able to watch DVD movies. You'll also be able to burn data
onto DVD writeable discs, and with the right software, design your own
DVD video discs. As far as data discs go, the currently available
single layer DVD-R/W, +R/W, discs can hold up to 4.7Gigabytes, which
is a fair bit. You'll still be able to burn CDRs and CDRWs, but
again, burn speed for the CD formats will generally be slower than
achievable on the faster CDRW drives.

If you do go for a DVD burner, I'd suggest looking at the LG 481S or
the NEC 4x DVD+/- burner that's been making the rounds (not sure of
the model number). I'd avoid the LG 4040B. I bought one of those,
and while it doesn't seem to have any trouble burning DVDs or CDs, it
*does* have some trouble burning DVDs at its top advertised speed --
at least in North America. I've never been able to burn any faster
than 2x with any media, and I've tried a wide selection from what's
available locally (TY, TDK, EMTEC, HP, Ritek, Princo, etc -- all 4x,
both - and + variants, as well as RW discs from EMTEC and HP). Oddly,
if you live in Europe, you may have better luck getting full speed out
of the drive. Hopefully a future firmware update will fix it, but
until then, consider it a 2x DVD burner. It seems to burn CDs at its
rated speed without problems (but it's rated speed is a pokey 24x
though).
 
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