Portable CD-Writers offer more flexibility
You have a notebook that is already a few years old but still serves you faithfully. It did not come with a CD-ROM drive when you bought it, let alone a CD-Writer (CD-RW) or DVD drive.
Should you now dump it just because it does not have any of these? Not so fast, unless you are an IBRA consultant or a lawyer to the rich and powerful.
Today, the CD-RW has become quite common, not only in desktop PCs, but also in midrange and high-end notebooks. Those who do serious work on their notebooks will need a CD-RW to back up all the fruit of their labors. Those who like to mix and match music from multiple compact discs and burn their own CD will also appreciate the new amenity.
A portable CD-RW will be a good addition to your gadgets if you use multiple PCs and notebooks.
Its up-to-700 MB data storage capacity will allow you to transfer digital photo albums, short video clippings and e-book files from one computer to another.
Backup is perhaps the most compelling reason to buy any type of CD-Writer, and even more so in the case of traveling professionals whose notebooks -- and the data on their hard disks -- are always at risk of getting lost.
A portable CD-RW, sometimes no larger than a hardcover book, offers the most flexibility. If you have an office of four users to five users, you can take turns using it to back up your work. Even if you do not need to share it with others, you are justified in having one of your own.
What to check when choosing a portable CD-RW? These drives come in various speeds, but it is the connection to the host machine that matters more. If your notebook is so old that it does not even have a 32-bit CardBus PCMCIA slot, you will have to find a parallel port-based CD-RW drive. Micro Solutions (micro- solutions.com) still has several models of external CD-RW drives with parallel port interface (US$199; lower speeds with lower prices are also available).
If your notebook does have a 32-bit PCMCIA support, you are more fortunate. Several portable CD-RW drives, including Benq (around $175), have the PCMCIA interface in addition to the more popular USB and increasingly popular FireWire.
The 400 Mbps what does Mbps stand for, is it megabytes per second? FireWire interface, also known as IEEE 1394 or I-Link, is one of the speediest connections used in external peripherals today.
A good CD-RW should also have at least 2 MB of buffer memory to ensure that the drive continuously has data to write on the platter (Plextor's external drive comes with a 4 MB buffer). In the past, burning your own CDs often used to fail because the data sometimes arrived too late to be written onto the CD, while the CD continued to spin.
Other choices include Iomega Predator II (about $230), Lite-On (about $160), Plextor PlexWriter External (about $280). QPS Que Fire (about $200) and Yamaha (FireWire, about $310, USB, about $260).
Some of these are more portable than others.
Iomega Predator II will use the faster (480 Mbps) USB 2.0 if your notebook already supports it, otherwise it will use the far slower (12 Mbps) USB 1.1.
The Lite-On drive has the same speed specifications as the Iomega (24x write, 10x rewrite and 40x read). In case you're wondering what the x stands for, it represents a speed of 150 kbps. So, a 40x read spec. means that the drive is capable of reading data at a speed of 40 x 150 kbps, or 6 Mbps.
The Yamaha, Plextor and Que Fire drives are external, and therefore they are bulkier. However, as they are not internal drives, they can still be considered to be portable. The Plextor drive can also support USB 2.0.
Micro Solutions also has a sleeker model that can support parallel, USB 2.0, USB 1.1 and Type II PC Cards. Called bantam backpack, it has a list price of US$ 229 at micro-solutions.com.
As more and more notebooks come with a DVD-CD RW combo drive, it is not surprising that portable peripherals are also appearing with the same capabilities.
Among them is the Sony VAIO External CDRW/DVD Combo Drive (around $499).
As a stand-alone device, it can also play compact discs -- making it a very expensive Discman. Unfortunately, though, it only works with notebooks with I-Link interface that run Windows XP (both the Professional and the Home Edition). Because it draws power from the host notebook using the I-Link connection, no adaptor is necessary.
Apart from the interface and the specs, the bundled software is also important. A good set of utilities will make it easy for you to write CD ROMs, CDs, etc. In case you are not happy with the included software, a good investment will be Easy CD Creator Platinum from Roxio ($99.95). -- Zatni Arbi