The CD-RW drive is the peripheral du jour, and if you don't have one
of these devices hooked up to your system, you're missing out on a
whole lot of fun and function. For starters, CD-RW drives can store
up to 650MB worth of sound, digital images, video, and text on a
single CD-Rewritable (CD-RW) or CD-Recordable (CD-R) disk. Best of
all, the CDs you create can be distributed and played in just about
any CD-ROM drive.
In addition to providing a flexible, long-term storage solution, these drives can also turn you into a desktop DJ: You can mix your favourite songs onto disks for parties, the car, your Walkman, whatever. You can even download music from the Internet and save it to a CD-R disk that works in just about any audio CD player. These drives write to two separate types of media: CD-R disks, which are inexpensive, write-once media that are ideal for custom music mixes; and CD-RWs, which cost around AU$6 and let you rewrite disk contents as often as you like.
We take a look at four CD-RW drives from Creative Labs, Iomega, Micro Solutions and Ricoh. Before you buy one of these drives, be sure your PC is up to the challenge. If you own an older Pentium PC, it may be too slow to keep up with the CD-burning process. For best results, most CD-RW drives require at least a 166MHz Pentium, but a Pentium II or better will provide greater reliability.
Burn, but Don't Meltdown
Creating custom disks is great fun, but the burning process isn't 100
percent foolproof. From time to time you'll experience glitches while
making CDs, which can lead to wasted time and money. Here are a few
CD-recording tips:
Creative Labs CD-RW Blaster 8432
Iomega ZipCD
Micro Solutions Backpack Bantam CD-ReWriter
Ricoh MP9060A
7%
2%
