CD Burner Question.

I've been loyal to this brand. Good price with performance.
Same page as previous poster. Is zipzoomfly the next newegg?
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=331609

Also, you should check out the local Best Buy, Staples, Office Max, or Circuit City Store. I see them in my area quite often at $20.00 or less after mail-in rebate.
They, like floppy and cd-rom drives have become generic.
I've used many different brands, and they all have performed satisfactorily.

You might consider adding the burner(DVD burners are cheap enough to consider) to the system instead of replacing the CDrom? This would mean being able to do disc to disc burns. Just a thought. chuck

chuckieu:

That's a good idea. About how much do one of them puppies go for? Do ya need to get any kinda card to install them, or do they install via USB's? Thanks.

...then it's a straight plug and play proposition. Speedwise, however, it's only worthwhile if your PC supports USB2. Note: Add-in PCI cards that will give you USB2 are available for between $30 - $50, depending on the number of ports provided on the card and/or whether there's an internal port provided.

We are talking about internal optical drives(IDE). If so,
you have four connections inside your computer. IDE1 has
a master and slave connection. This is where you will
have your hard drives-Master=HD0(your main, or only,hard drive), slave=second hard drive. IDE2 is for(usually)
optical drives such as CDrom,DVDrom,CDRW, or DVDRW. You can have two-Master and slave without adding a PCI card.
A 16x dual-format,double layer DVDRW now runs$69.00US and a DVDrom runs $25.00US(or less). You can spend more, but the deck usually won't last any longer. It is all about the features. Good luck. chuck

Hey:

I started to think about what Chuck said, about leaving the CD Rom, & getting an external DVD, and that made so much sense to me. I've got both Best Buy & Circuit City right by me, so I went to check em out. I'm not a big fan of Best Buy because it seems anything I've ever gotten from them has already been opened. We had a major massacree when we got a computer thru them. We ended up exchanging it 6 or 7 times. We'd get a new one (?), & there would already be programs loaded on it, or it'd already be set up, complete with passwords.

Well, Best Buy was pretty much picked thru, & they only had 2 DVD's, both internal, & only 1 was writable. I had gone to Circuit City 1st & saw several units. When I got back there, there were only 2 external writable ones left. One was a Sony 12X. Now my wife used to work for Sony Service for 14 years. I learned that they had some products that ya just don't want to go near. One is the telephones. They're complete junk. Always breaking, & so many design flaws. The othe product line ya want to stay away from is the computer stuff. Same reasons as the phones. Plus, they are very costly.

Circuit City wanted $229.00 for it, AFTER the rebate. So here it is, what I ended up with was, an I/O Magic DVD+RW/+R, External USB 2.0, Dual-Format,8X DVD ReWritable Drive. (WHEW, that was a mouthful) After rebate, it was $120.00. I noticed that the internal ones were about 1/2 the price. I hope I did okay. I'm sure if I had gone hunting around more, I probably coulda found better for less, but I want to hurry up & get this hooked up so I can start makin back ups of my files. The way this darned Dell's been acting lately, I'm taking big chances everyday I let go by without doin that.

I hope to get this thing hooked up today or tomorrow at the latest so I can get all my stuff backed up. Then I can start OPERATION FIX THE DAMN DELL! I also freaked when I saw how cheap HD's are going for now. Looks like the wife & son's machines are gonna be gettin slave drives. Mine already has one.