PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Our Picks

Here are the CD writers and related products we recommend:

ATAPI CD-(M)RW drive

Plextor ATAPI PlexWriter. In the past, we preferred SCSI burners for their greater performance and reliability, and recommended ATAPI burners only when cost was the top priority. That changed when Plextor introduced the ATAPI 8/4/32A in early 2000, and followed it in July 2000 with the 12/10/32A. That drive was the first we’d used that had BURN-Proof technology. We found it impossible to burn coasters with that drive, even when we tried hard to do so. All recent Plextor ATAPI PlexWriters include BURN-Proof, and all are excellent products. If you want a reliable CD burner that will run for years, buy a midrange or high-end PlexWriter. Plextor PlexWriters are inexpensive, fast, and robust, and work flawlessly under Windows 98/98 SE/Me, NT/2000/XP, and Linux. You simply can’t buy a better CD writer (http://www.plextor.com).

SCSI CD-(M)RW drive

Plextor PX-W4012TS PlexWriter 40/12/40S. We still have several Plextor SCSI burners around here, but we haven’t installed a new one recently. Plextor ATAPI burners are simply so good that there’s seldom any point to installing a SCSI unit. The sole remaining bastion of SCSI CD burners is CD-R duplicators, who burn many identical CDs simultaneously. In that environment SCSI is a must-have, but for routine CD burning an ATAPI PlexWriter is actually a better solution. If we needed a SCSI burner, we’d buy the 40/12/40S.

USB CD-(M)RW drive

Plextor USB 2.0 PlexWriter ...