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TechRevu |
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 Plextor PlexWriter 48/24/48U Hi-Speed USB CD-RW driveDaniel Dern 7/22/03 At sub-$200 MRSP for a USB-2 external CD burner that can write CD/Rs at up to 48x and CD/RWs at up to 24x speeds, Plextor's new PlexWriter 48/24/48U Hi-Speed USB CD-RW drive may not be the cheapest, but at MSRP of $155, it's a fair price for a solid package of the right features. Model: Plextor PX-W4824TU/SW
CD-writer prices sure have dropped. I remember writing about these around a decade ago -- for use by folks making CD-ROMs -- and one was something like five or ten or fifteen thousand dollars. Probably it had more mechanical features, but even so. Now I see internal CD burners available for less than a hundred bucks (newest and better ones in the $100-$150 range) at places like CompUSA and Micro Center. At sub-$200 MRSP for a USB-2 external CD burner that can write CD/Rs at up to 48x and CD/RWs at up to 24x speeds, Plextor's new PlexWriter 48/24/48U Hi-Speed USB CD-RW drive may not be the cheapest, but at MSRP of $155, it's a fair price for a solid package of the right features. (See below for a brief debate of internal vs. external, though.) including:
One reason I'd been holding off getting a CD burner has been paranoia re their susceptibility to a single glitch fouling up the whole burn process, and/or making the disc-burning more like writing to a floppy disk in terms of reliability and flexibility. It looks like the hardware and software have finally gotten there. (I believe this is called "MT Ranier" and is included natively in Windows XP) While looks shouldn't matter for a device like this, it's worth noting that this Plextor looks impressive -- aluminum gun-metal finish with a black face plate, none of this off-white or dull grey plastic stuff. It's also about 2" by 6" by 10", and medium heavy -- like five pounds -- hardly an office space hog, but not something you'll carry around casually as a traveler. This isn't a criticism; I don't see this device being intended to be "portable/mobile" but rather for office/home use, as an external device. In exchange for being heavier and larger, this PlexWriter offers higher speeds -- 48 for CD/R, 24 for Cd/RW... and is probably slightly more rugged. (For a smaller, lighter-weight burner for the traveller, Plextor also has its PlexWriter Portable External Hi-Speed USB CDRW (8/8/24), for $175 MSRP.) Out of the box, this Plextor looks elegant and space-agey, with burnished aluminum or whatever. The front controls are headphone jack and volume, Eject, and "manual (insert end of paperclip and push gently) eject." On the back, jacks for USB and power, and the power switch. With the right software, the PlexWriter will let you start writing to a CD-R, and keep adding files, rather than just the historical "one continuous burn only" mode. With a CD-RW, of course, you can, presumably, keep writing and rewriting, like with a floppy, hard disk, or magneto-optical. For a quick look at the PlexWriter in action, it's time to switch over to a look at one of the bundled software packages. ROXIO Easy CD Creator 5 DVD Edition The PlexWriter includes Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 DVD Edition, Roxio PhotoSuite 5 SE, CyberLink PowerDVD and Dantz Retrospect - a healthy bundle of stuff, and would easily cost you more by itself than the hardware. (Easy CD Creator 6 is going for $99, for example.) To take CD burning out for a spin or two, I cranked up Easy CD Creator. Although the Plextor site still lists this PlexWriter as coming with version 5, Roxio is up to Version 6, FYI. CD burning, and therefore the software that does it, has gotten a little over-complicated, option wise. This isn't a criticism per se of Roxio or their software; it's a reflection on the number of choices now available, like having a combo toaster-oven-microwave instead of a plain old toaster -- now you have to decide what you're doing. For those of us who -- I blush to admit -- haven't really tried any CD burning before, the options on Easy CD Creator's main screen create conceptual confusion, like "what's the difference between a "data CD" and a "sharing photos" CD? I'm sure that within a few days of doing it, or a few minutes of serious manual-browsing, I'd know, but what I don't see anywhere is a simple one-screen compare-and-contrast help chart. (Having consulted a teenager, who quickly rattled off the differences, it's clear this isn't secret or difficult info.) Anyway, once I figured out which icon to click, "it simply works." To test the "copy a CD," I grabbed a CDROM from a recent issue of Maximum PC, with ~500MB on it. "Disc copy" took 5 minutes; "Test and copy" took 10 minutes. In the words of Nero Wolfe, "Satisfactory." Since one of the main obvious uses for a CD burner is to make copies of system backups, e.g., gigabyte-plus system images made using Norton Ghost, I was going to bust Roxio's chops for not including a "disk spanning" ("burn continue on next rock," I mean, "continued on next disk") feature. However, a) I then realized this would require a way to un-span/rejoin the pieces before feeding them back to Ghost, and b) I subsequently discovered that Ghost includes an image-splitting feature to accommodate the need to span. Ghost can dump directly to a burner (if it's on the list of supported ones, particularly for externals).
Or -- and much faster, since Ghost (like, I believe,
all disk imagers) doesn't currently have USB 2.0 drivers for the DOS mode that
it (and other disk imagers) have to run in, but only parallel or USB 1 drivers,
which are way slower than USB 2.0 (USB 1 and parallel are roughly the same speed,
certainly like a tenth as fast), you can a) use Ghost's "split" feature to generate
the Ghost image as a series of autonamed size
(Note: I haven't yet tried either the splitting, or restoring from split pieces
via Ghost.)
Once I decided what to do, Easy CD Creator certainly did it quickly and easily.
One cavil: there's no "total elapse time" timer. It let me know how long each
of several steps was going to take, and how much time had elapsed, but in a two or
four step process, it would have been nice to know how long the whole process took, e.g.
"test and copy this CD," as a ballpark for doing more.
Yeah, I could (and did) use my wristwatch's stopwatch
function, but they could have provided this feature easily.
Options I still haven't tried yet include copying audio tracks, creating
"photo CDs" (slightly different format, I think), and playing with write and
rewrite.
Presumably, other popular burnware, e.g. NERO Burning ROM, would work as well
with the Plextor.
In any case, for a hundred fifty bucks, the Plextor PlexWriter 48/24/48U
Hi-Speed USB CD-RW drive, and accompanying software is, a solid high-speed burner,
and that's hard to argue with. I don't have comparisons against other
burners, or other software.
One added note: Kudos to the phone tech support, for being available quickly,
and being able to answer my questions.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE...TO CHOOSE FROM
Since I started playing with this unit in early Spring, Plextor
has come out with some new models, notably their
PlexWriter Premium IDE internal CD-RW, doing 52/24/52, finagling
up to a gigabyte onto a disc, and with other interesting features,
for MSRP of $129.00, and in May, Plextor
announced
an internal 52/24/52 CD-R/RW burner MSRPing at $86.
And there's an external USB 2.0 version of the Premium available in England;
possibly Plextor will release one in the U.S.
With burner technologies such a moving target, if one has more than
one computer (e.g., I've got two active desktop machines, and keep
getting ready to buy a notebook), what makes sense, internal or external?
External is easier to install, and one device can serve many machines. But
staying external +brings more complexity-bother, e.g.
if burning multi-disk Ghost saves. Internal means ya gotta open up the box
and install the puppy... but presumably gives fastest burn speeds.
Budget, flexibility, convenience, upgrading... the eternal computer balancing act.
I don't have a good answer to this one; fortunately, you get to decide
what makes the most sense for you. Notice this doesn't even address
the question of DVD burners, which certainly would simplify the
saving-Gbyte-plus system images question, though.
Anyway, again, my short answer: Plextor external burner, highly recommended.
Roxio software.
(Daniel P. Dern |
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