Computer Reviews

Back in April I had a look at this model, just in blue. At that time I was concerned about the price of the DVD writer. I was also worried about the complexity of portability. After having a look again and having another look at the features on offer and the new, cheaper price I have some more thoughts about it.

The price of the Plextor px716uf is just over 200 dollars. This is still fairly expensive, but not too exhorbitant. At this price its still way over that of an internal unit, but puts it much more in the view of those who would like something portable.

Plextor are a very well known name in the optical drive business. They have been around for years and have had their share of top-performing drives. The Plextor DVD±RW dual-layer DVD writer adds to that by bringing internal speed writing to an external drive. It really can match the speed of internal drives, which makes it even more appealing as a portable.

Basic features include…

• 16x write speed for DVD±R media
• 8x for DVD+RW and 4x for DVD-RW
• 4x DVD+R Dual layer writing speed
• USB 2.0 and Firewire connection
• Portable, of course

With flash memory sticks making such a big impact in the portable media segment, its easy to try and compare them, but of course they are intended for different purposes. Although memory sticks can offer large space, they are limited to what they have onboard, they are very small and can be transported with ease. This drive is not so small, and would probably need a small bag, or space in your laptop bag to carry it and it’s power adapter.

It does offer the ability to change disks. You can just carry a few DVDs and have a nearly unlimited amount of space for data. That is the real plus of the drive.

Any drive from Plextor is worth a look at and there is a certain cool factor to having a super-fast portable DVD writer. I don’t know if that really does it for most people, but hey.

The drive excels if you want to transport a large amount of information. It does not beat a memory stick for day to day transport of a few files and data. But if you want a great drive that can be used in a few locations or you want to transport large data quantities, the Plextor PX716 dvd±rw dual-layer dvd writer is certainly worth a look.

For ease of use and convenience when it comes to transportation portable drives can’t be beat. The cyberhome dvd recorder allows you to not only tranport your information with you but to actually burn stuff onto the DVD when you are done.

Portable devices have been around for a while, and with the advent of memory sticks and other portable devices the optical drives like portable DVD and CD drives have taken a bit of a back seat in terms of popularity.

The Cyberhome DVD recorder offers an affordable solution for those looking for a portable DVD recorder. In terms of price the cyberhome dvd recorder falls right up there with the best value. There are very few DVD recorders cheaper then this one, which does beg the question, is it any good?

Here is a basic feature list…

• 16x read speed
• 16x write speed for DVD+R and DVD-R
• 4x for DVD+RW, DVD-RW and DVD+R Dual layer
• Support for both USB and FireWire

These are pretty good specs for a cheap dvd recorder.

Back to the performance. There have been few consumer complaints about this product. This is not too unexpected as even the cheapest products do what they are supposed to do, just depends how long and well they do them for.

Other people who bought the cyberhome dvd recorder found it to be reliable and to perform the task its intended for, and that is writing DVDs and being able to do it in different locations.

Praise for the drive itself include the ability to just plug it in and not be able to install drivers, although that’s mostly to do with Windows XP. It also managed to do it on a non-windows system too which is great news for those running other systems.

A few production faults have been noted, most of which are cosmetic, rather than to do with the main functioning of the device. One customer reported the drive tray not appearing closed (still functioning) and the little indicator lights not working. These are genuine complaints, but would be most easily fixed with a more expensive bigger name brand burner.

Overall I feel it is good value for the money, if you are going for a discount deal there will be problems, which is something to expect. However for the money you can’t really go wrong. There are no problems with the recorder itself. So I recommend it for a value deal.

Pros

• Fast
• Good functionality
• Cheap

Cons

• No firewire cable (just a little something that could be included)

Another bargain DVD drive for people who have lots of information that they need to put into long term storage. Or for anyone who needs to free space on their hard drive for other things.

This drive is a great way to store those family movies safely for a long time.

Toshiba are well known for their cheap laptop computers, but they also make other components.

The Toshiba DVD burner writes DVDs at speed that rival the fastest around today. It can write DVD+R format at 16x while handling DVD-R at a still respectable 12x.

It can write any DVD format, as well as being able to write to DVD dual layer discs. Dual layer allows two lots of information to be stored “on top of each other” on the shiny side of the DVD. Many years back, before this technology, DVD movies would have discs with two shiny (containing information) sides. Almost all of the newer ones use Dual Layer.

A very affordable drive. Probably not a true high performance drive, but still capable of handling everything that can be thrown at it when used with a low cost desktop computer.