[Stoner]

I bought a new CD writer today.
I didn't 'need' it, It was at a super low price and more than 3X's as fast for cd's and cdrw's as my old Samsung burner.
Micro Advantage is the brand name and Office Max was the source.
I had to get a rain check as they were out of stock 3 weeks ago when it was offered.
Office Max handles past due rebates by charging the after rebate price at the register, in this situation.
My final price at the register was $9.95 + sales tax

I've got it up and working without any hassels:
It is quiet.
The tray has some type of retainer that prevents it fron snaping open and banging the stop.
The tray opens and closes very smoothly.
I have done a 200mb burn and everything went fine on the first try.
The software that came with it is Roxio Creator 6 and a bonus -- Photosuite 5.
However, I am using Nero 5.5 because I prefer it.
I would think the Photosuite is worth the $10 at least and it's a freebie!

The burner is rated at 52x 32x 52x

I think this is an amazing buy for only $10


Jack

[hewee]

Hey great buy there.

[Stoner]

Just wanted to add some more to my review

This was a positive for me.
I had acquired several 4x re writable disks( PNY and CompUSA brand) that worked well in an older HP 9100 cdrw but wouldn't work in a newer, faster Samsung. The Samsung was spec'd for 'High Speed' cdrws, not the old 4x.
I've seen other members with similar problems concerning media.

This Micro Advantage, using Nero 5.5, does write and erase properly on the 4x media

One small bug, and only with the 4x media, after the erase, the tray does not automatically pop out. By right clicking the CD icon in 'My Computer' and again clicking on 'eject', the tray extends.

I ran the Nero verification option on each trial run and all data checked out as having been burned to disk properly.


Makes me happy that I don't have to throw the 4x out. I can use that old 4x re writable media again

Just slowly

[K7M]

I bought the same CD-RW for a friends computer. It works great. I did the same thing also use Nero rather than the Roxio. Office Max has the same deal this week on a Khypermedia $9.95 after rebates. I'm getting one for one of the computers at work.

[ScrewBall]

I also got in on this deal, however, min is going to be $19.95 after rebate. Drive works great, however, I burned 2 disks, one data and one audio. Neither disk is recognized by my DVD-ROM drive. The DVD just sits there for a few seconds then spits the disk out just fine. I put the audio disk into my CD MP3 Player and it reads and plays just fine. I'm using RiDATA 48X CD-R media, burned at 48X. Will burning at a higher speed than what my DVD-ROM drive supports cause a problem? I have not yet tried burning at a slower speed. I am, however, trying to upgrade the firmware on the DVD-ROM to see if that makes a difference. Not ease to do when you're running Win 2K with an NTFS partition and no working floppy disk to make a boot disk from, hihi.

Any comments would be appreciated.

ScrewBall
"Just Screw It"

[Stoner]

Hi ScrewBall and welcome to TSG

I'm afraid I can't help much with your problem.
The drives I have in several machines presently read each others burned CD and CDRW's........including a DVD ROM drive. I did have, several years ago, a HP CDRW that would burn media that only it could read.

Recently, I bought some Verbatum cds and about every 10th cd isn't recognized in any of my drives. But cheaper media I have, has no problems. go figure?

The easiest thing to try might to be changing to a different brand media and see if the problem continues.



Jack

[K7M]

and as far as not having a floppy to boot from, create a bootable cd and boot from your cd-rom drive. I'm running win2k with NTFS and can boot from either a floppy or cd.