Hello Jim
  I'm going to try to respond to 2 posts at once, this one and the question
regarding Plextor.
  First off, Plextor.  I have owned a number of Plextor drives and always
been pleased even when the price was at a premium, which it usually is,
because they're just worth it.  That said I made a mistake recently by
buying a model 716SA with the emphasis on the "S" which means it
is basically a PATA drive bridged internally for SATA.  Perhaps one day as
SATA (and especially SATA optical drives) become more common it won't be so
problematic.  However I had no problem in OS/2 thanks to Danis506 which was
the main reason I wrote her here to thank her profusely.  I've experienced
minor troubles in WinXP and somewhat heavier than minor problems in Linux
which required newest kernels and considerable jumping through hoops.  This
is especially a problem when mixing PATA w/ SATA.  Plextor still gets top
honors in virtually all testng facilities and here's the most valuable
reason why.

  Plextor DVD burners can burn at high speed on the very cheapest of media.
 This is not only in lab white room testing but I've done it.  While it is
certainly true that the bundled Plextools (runs only in windoze) is highly
valuable for tweakers, it is by no means essential to good sevice.  AFAIK
the basic program, CDRecord - used in OS/2 as well as Linux, was written on
a Plextor test bed. Bottom line it's hard to go wrong with a Plextor other
than in price.  I bought the SATA model because it was fairly heavily
discounted - for Plextor - (as was the front loader which I'd rather have
bought in retrospect) and now wish I'd spent the 15 extra dollars to get a
PATA model.

  Some cheaper burners require high quality (read more expensive) media and
when one is burning a dual-layer at 7+ Gigs, speed somewhat matters unless
you have way too much time on your hands.  The tough thing is there are
some nearly as good burners at roughly half the price of Plextor but it
takes considerable research, not just of the brand name but the exact model
and some folks, myself included would rather spend the money than the time
and just have complete peace of mind from the get-go.  That said, a $50US
coup at finding near equal quality is pretty cool peace of mind in itself -
your choice.

Jimmy
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: inkleput{at}isp.com
> "Lloyd Fuller"  said:
> 
> >Yes, I watch the sales and the rebates.
> 
> This is something that puzzles me.  I see people talking about stuff
> near $75.  I see drives  on eBay for as little as &10.  I have trouble
> bringing the opposites together.  There has to be more to it than just
> finding the cheapest thing out there.
> 
> Jim L, via eCS 1.2r version of OS/2
> -- 
> One class of person should NEVER be allowed to run a nation - anyone who wants 
> to.





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