Hi Gang,
Which of these burners is better and why?

Thanks in Advance,
Christian Blackburn[/quote]

Tell you the truth, I'd spend the extra money on either a TDK Velo, my personal favorite or a Plextor. Of course if you're strapped for cash I think you may find that both of these are probably made by the same OEM so it doesn't really matter then

Do they both have the same warranty period? This may make the difference in this case.

Hi Jimmijo,
I think one of these OEMs was a branded Yamaha. That'd be good enough for me. Currently I have a Plextor 16x10x40, but that just takes too damn long to burn and the Mode4 DMA practically uses all of my CPU I hate that. Also the RW on it doesn't seem to be very reliable.
Cheers,
Christian

Hmm, well I have two TDK Velo's, one is a slower 16x10x40 and the other is a faster 40x12x48 and they've worked flawlessly for me so far I've not owned a Plextor but everyone I've talked to that owns one said they've liked them. I also work for a company that sells Aopen hardware and most, if not all their CD-RW's have Ricoh circuit boards in them. Not sure if Ricoh actually makes them or what but of course like so much of the computer hardware now a days, it's made in Taiwan

Aopen makes some very nice hardware. I had an Aopen AX6B+ motherboard that had defective USB Ports and I didn't find out about it until after the warranty period, because USB hardware was so new and expensive that I didn't bother buying a USB component until the board was already about 13 or 14 months old . I still have to assume Aopen makes some decent stuff, but obviously I had a lot of bad luck with them. IBM on the other hand won't be forgiving any time soon. Search for "IBM" and "Deathstar" and you can read all about their 75GXP HD line that should have been recalled and how they're in the middle of a class action lawsuit regarding the matter.
Well Cheers Amigo,
Christian

I don't have much to say about either of those drives you mentioned there, but I must send out a little plug for the cd writer I have in my system right now. It's an LG brand, and was very cheap. It ended up costing just over $50 Canadian, so that would cost no more than $30 US.

To be honest I really only got it as a stop-gap measure at the time to replace another writer that died, fully expecting it to pack it in fairly quickly, but it's been as reliable a peice of hardare I've owned, and it's never coughed at any media I've thrown at it.

I was very pleasantly surprised.

I haven't heard anything bad about LG drives myself and on occasion we even install a few into some new systems as well

I got a Lite-On 52x24x52 at newegg.com for $50. It is very reliable. I have no coasters. Seriously, look in to them. They have nothing but positlve reviews and are as inexpensive as they come.

Hi Guys,
Thaks for the help. The main thing I'm a little worried about loosing is the use of the exact CD Duplicator that comes with my Plextor 16x10x40 burner. Is there a freeware alternative? I have adaptec EZ-CD 5.31, but I don't think it makes exact duplicates (correct me if I'm wrong?). I would say that this is the main thing holding me back from buying a newer budget burner.
Thanks,
Christian

Well it does on standard ISO9660, non-copy protected disks, just like Nero does.

If you're looking to dupe copy-protected disks then you have to go with a third party app like Clone CD or a similar app

Most of these sites have info on the makes and models of burners they have tested to work with their software. Perhaps this is the first place to go

Hi Jmmijo,
Thanks for your reply. I take it Clone CD is free? What file library would contain it?
Thanks in Advance,
Christian Blackburn

Actually I think Clone CD is a commercial product. I've not looked for free ones but take a look at downloads.com first and see which ones are free

Hi JimiJo,
I tried Tucows and briefly SourceForge and I couldn't find a freeware solution. I find this rather hard to believe. That no-one has created one. Surely there must be one out there somewhere.
Cheers,
Christian

Yeah, there does seem to be a lack of free version of burning software out there ATM