DVD burners

[craigwatanabe]

Re: DVD burners

beware about external enclosures and CD/DVD drives is that some drives are longer than others and some enclosures are shorter so measure everything before buying to ensure a proper fit.

[adrian]

Re: DVD burners

beware about external enclosures and CD/DVD drives is that some drives are longer than others and some enclosures are shorter so measure everything before buying to ensure a proper fit.

Is $40 good for an enclosure? That's the price CompUSA wanted for a few.

And I went out shopping today, and got a Sony DW-D26a for $80, and with the $15 nero software bundle, I paid only $100 for it. The thing is, that I bought it from Personal Touch Computers and I believe Compusa wanted $105 for a simlar model

If you want cheap hardware (think local newegg.com) then go to Personal Touch Computers! </end cheap plug>

[pinakboy]

Re: DVD burners

no foget about Alliance Computers too on Dillingham!

[craigwatanabe]

Re: DVD burners

I'm debating on whether to go external DVD burner on my next build or just go with a Tigerdirect barebones deal for $599:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...462318&CatId=0

This is the read from the URL above: Cybertron’s HyperThreading Monster!
512MB DDR, 80GB SATA HDD, DVD Burner!
This just in from Cybertron. Gaming performance that will quicken your pulse and send your senses into overdrive. Nobody makes gaming systems that combine the power, speed and flair of Cybertron’s monster machines. And this sensational Cybertron system is your best opportunity to own a world-class gaming system at an incredibly low price. This mind-boggling package includes a swift, powerful Pentium 4 530J 3GHz processor with HyperThreading Technology, a high-octane PCChips M957G LGA775 socket motherboard, 512MB of fast PC3200 DDR memory, a huge 80GB Serial-ATA hard drive, a high-quality 16x DVD±RW Dual-Layer burner, terrific onboard video graphics, exceptional sound, and the classic X-Blade Gamer case with 350-watt power supply. Plus you get a comfortable, reliable keyboard and 3-button scroll mouse and a powered set of stereo speakers.

Basically all I need to do is add a PCI AGP graphics card if I want to get better graphics but I'm not planning on doing serious gaming on this. For the price it's hard to beat especially when you consider it's an LGA775-based P4 with HT running 3Ghz plus you're running 512mb of PC3200 ram. Since I'm on dial up this mobo already has a modem built in. Some of the other mobos I've been looking at loses them altogether so I'd have to spend another $40 for a decent 56k modem.

At $599 I figure I'd be spending about $50 more than if I bought everything separately, but the saving the sanity of putting it all together is worth the money. Since if I did buy separately, I'd probably be buying from various mail order vendors so the cumulative shipping costs for all vendors would probably exceed even a modest build.

The best part of this is that nothing in this barebones is proprietary so I can ugrade easily with the latest Intel LGA 775 socket.

Then there's this barebones for $299 but doesn't include the hard drive and I'd have to get a modem but the price is inticing:

Abit Barebone Special!
Abit Mobo, CPU, 512MB DDR and Fan And More
Great graphics, turbo-charged performance and extraordinary multimedia features. Buy this powerhouse barebone kit and that’s what you’ll get from your system. We’ve put together a stellar lineup of fabulous components to help you create a dazzling system that will be great for games, extreme computing, business applications and world-class entertainment. Check out these magnificent products. The versatile Abit IG-80 Intel 915 Socket 775 motherboard that supports Dual DDR 400, PCI-Express X16, Hyper Threading Technology, IEEE1394, 10/100 LAN and 6-channel audio. This terrific barebone also features a fast, efficient Intel Pentium 4 2.66GHz processor with 1MB cache and FSB 533. Plus 512MB of swift, reliable PC3200 DDR memory from Ultra at 400MHz CL2.5. We’ve included the splendid Intel Original Socket 775 Prescott cooling fan to keep the heat at bay and topped it all off with a handsome PowerUP Silver 2526 Mid-Tower computer case with a clear side panel, front USB and audio ports, along with a 400-watt power supply.


http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...431436&CatId=0

At just under $300 less it's a really great deal especially if you already have a hard drive to install and DVD burner. I'm thinking of this one too and go heavy on another LCD monitor for the same price as the first barebones alone.

[adrian]

Re: DVD burners

By all means, get one.

I don't know how much the discs will cost, as I got the drive based on what discs my brother left before he left for the mainland a few weeks ago (his computer used DVD-R, and the burner that Circuit City installed for us only used DVD+R).

terrific onboard video graphics, exceptional sound,

Upgrade the graphics and sound card, and while your at it, get an Antec PSU to replace that generic PSU, and you'll be gaming like 4377.

[shaveice]

Re: DVD burners

howzit lurkah,

was gonna answer you but aaron is faster than one peeing bullet! yup, the guy threw the towel in cuz they was putting on the heat!

about matsumoto's, i totally agree. i'm puzzled that people would want to wait in a long line on a hot day when you can get really ono shave ice from aoki's! oh well, i just say that it's better for me cuz then i can get mine that much faster!

[kimo55]

Re: DVD burners

matsumoto's, i totally agree. i'm puzzled that people would want to wait in a long line on a hot day when you can get really ono shave ice from aoki's! oh well, i just say that it's better for me cuz then i can get mine that much faster!

erry time i cruise thru haleiwa get planny lines both places.

[adrian]

Re: DVD burners

Luckily I did go with a DVD, because when I popped in an old hard drive (one that I had for 2 years when I built my computer) it started making funny noises (mostly "clicks", like something was on the platter, scraping against the head reader). It interferred with my booting into XP (even if I disabled it in the BIOS) so I just unplugged the power (when it was off of course) and I was right in doing so (it was that drive).

A lot of files was still on it, and now I remembered why I discontinued using it. I guess optical media (CDs, DVDs, etc) last longer than Hard drives.

[Miulang]

Re: DVD burners

Just remember that CDROMs and DVDs aren't forever, either. Plenty of people who previously backed up to optical media are actually now finding, and advocating, using good-ol-fashioned hard drive for archival storage. Rather than building a library of two hundred CDs, just buy an external 160GB hard drive, fill it up, then store it someplace dry and safe. Just as economical, it turns out, and possibly more far-sighted than previously thought.

And they last even less than that if you happen to burn your CDR-Ws with one writer and then replace it with a newer burner! Sometimes that stuff isn't backwards compatible (as in, have you ever had someone try to send you a .doc in XP and open it in a Windoze box that's running Win '98? Grrr...I've got some CDs that I burned myself on my P2 compatible burner that I can't open on my P3 compatible box! So then, what good is archiving it?

Miulang

[adrian]

Re: DVD burners

Well, its been more than a week since I got the DVD burner, and so far, I've made 9 DVDs, with 3 backup movies (which came in handy when my siblings had a sleepover at a cousin's house) but I only had 3 coasters made because of a small error in a setting for the program (lately, I've been having those small error problems, but nothing major that didn't kill me).

Now, to find some DL discs for cheap so that I can really free up some space on my computer.

[shaveice]

Re: DVD burners

hi doc, three coasters isn't bad but i'd be a little, just a little concerned. i've gone through about 200 dvds and out of that, i think i've had maybe 3 coasters.

one thing you might want to do--i think you know this already but just in case--is to reduce the burn speed. i often set it to the lowest or the second slowest burning speed just so it won't mess up, and in the meantime, i do other stuff on my computer.

congrats on the new burner!

[adrian]

Re: DVD burners

hi doc, three coasters isn't bad but i'd be a little, just a little concerned. i've gone through about 200 dvds and out of that, i think i've had maybe 3 coasters.

one thing you might want to do--i think you know this already but just in case--is to reduce the burn speed. i often set it to the lowest or the second slowest burning speed just so it won't mess up, and in the meantime, i do other stuff on my computer.

congrats on the new burner!

Well, it turned out that I messed up some settings while I was copying the disc to my computer, so I learned from that. And even though I have a powerful system, I just close unneeded programs(widgets, open browsers, etc) and let it burn while I do something else away from the computer (watch TV, eat, exercise, etc)

[808_m3]

Re: DVD burners

What brand of DVD media are you using?

I find the cheap stuff often results in churning out a lot of coasters. What was especially annoying was having successful burns with the cheap media and then getting read errors while trying to read the data.

The two brands that I use are TDK and Fuji. You spend a little more on the TDK stuff, but at least it's piece of mind that your precious data is burned well on the disk.

You can also use this application called dvdinfopro. Once I burn a DVD, I use dvdinfopro to read each sector on the disk to make sure there are no errors. Likewise, I suppose you could use the verify feature in many of the DVD burning applications.

[adrian]

Re: DVD burners

What brand of DVD media are you using?

I find the cheap stuff often results in churning out a lot of coasters. What was especially annoying was having successful burns with the cheap media and then getting read errors while trying to read the data.

The two brands that I use are TDK and Fuji. You spend a little more on the TDK stuff, but at least it's piece of mind that your precious data is burned well on the disk.

You can also use this application called dvdinfopro. Once I burn a DVD, I use dvdinfopro to read each sector on the disk to make sure there are no errors. Likewise, I suppose you could use the verify feature in many of the DVD burning applications.

Its a pack of DVDs my brother left at home after he went back to the mainland (a reason why I wanted a multi reading DVD recorder: I didn't want to spend all of that money for media). I'll check later.