CD Burner

:-)
Hello Gezzy

Modern CD burners have gotten MUCH better than the ones that were available just a couple of years ago. In my view, possibly the biggest improvement has been in the development and introduction of "burn-proof" and other overburn / underburn technologies which for me at least have resulted in ZERO bad disks since I upgraded.
I use my burner for making music CD's as well as for doing data backups. The music CD's that I make play fine on standard home CD players; although I haven't tried them in a car system yet....I have heard that car players can sometimes be more "picky", although I have yet to see any technical papers on that issue.
Be sure to get a burner with the biggest buffer memory possible as this helps to ensure a good result, and also pay close attention to your system requirements and make sure that your computer is comfortably beyond the minimum system requirements of the burner. Installing a burner in a computer that is "barely" meeting the burner's requirements is asking for trouble.
One option to consider is a DVD burner. They allow you to burn substantially more data to a disk, although the DVD disks are more expensive. The DVD burners are still pretty new on the market, and I haven't jumped on one yet, preferring to adopt the "wait till other people work the bugs out first" attitude.
If you don't anticipate the need to burn huge amounts of data to a single disk, (backups can be "spanned" between multiple disks, as an example and therefore don't require that you fit them onto a single disk) you may wish to consider waiting on a DVD burner. Invariably, the prices will go down and the quality will go up, just as has been the case for CD burners and everything else pertaining to computers.
As far as a specific brand is concerned, I have owned an HP and a Plextor burner, and ultimately they both performed just fine although I had an easier setup experience with the Plextor. For burning software I've used both Roxio and Nero and I must confess that for my needs the Nero was the clear winner in terms of cross-platform reliability, overall ease of use, available features and program stability.
Others may have different experiences when used on different computers.
I hope that this is of some help. Please let me know if I have failed to address your question properly

i got an after market CD burner for my puter from Dell that i installed in tower, i have attempted to burn music CD's for the car and out of 12 or so tries have gotten 1 that plays on anything other than my puter, Yes i realize i am not doing something right but---

Thank you for starting this, gez (and BTW your picture is H.O.T.); this is precisely what's on my mind of late.

I would like to get technical for a moment, stoat:

A 52X CD-R, 24X CD-RW 48X read with buffer underrun technology (proprietary name is CAV--Constant Angular Velocity) offered by TDK and including the following software--NeroExpress, Digital MixMaster, and InCD--for about $200 is a pretty good buy...yes?

Hello PDiddie,
Based upon a quick check of current market pricing on similar-sounding (but not necessarily identical ) burners at both CNET's site as well as Amazon, I am having trouble recommending the burner you suggest, providing it's an internal unit.
If it's an external unit, which are always much more expensive than the internal ones, then it sounds like it might be a "pretty good" (although not spectacular) value.
You may wish to check CNEt, Amazon, and other sites (and of course, when you're ready to buy, buy whatever you choose from Amazon via the Able2Know links....it will benefit Able2Know if you do so )

I am seeing numerous internal burners from major manufacturers for well under the $200. price point. Although not all of them are showing exactly the same speed specs that you indicate, they are all pretty darned close, and the real-world difference that you would realize would likely be negligible if it is even noticeable at all.
An additional concern of mine is the burning software. You indicate that the burner comes supplied with, among other titles, NeroExpress. My Nero software is called "Nero Burning Rom", and as a sub-option of it, you can switch to NeroExpress if you want a simplified "wizard" interface.
My concern is that if the burner is advertised as coming with just the "express" version of Nero, that this may be a stripped-down version of the "full" Nero software package.
If the software is all bundled on one CD which includes drivers and all setup programs, it may be difficult (and certainly will add additional expense) for you to upgrade the Nero software to the "full" version if you should ever desire more functionality from your burner than what the NeroExpress software provides.
There are a lot of "if's" here, I know, and I apologize if this seems incoherent. It's just that there are a lot of variables to consider and I don't have ALL of the information at hand with which to be more specific.

Based upon what you've told me, my ultimate recommendation would be to hold off on purchasing the unit that you are mentioning and shop around a bit more. Try to find a burner with 4 MB of buffer memory, some form of "burn-proof" (or equivalent) technology and ensure that it's minimum system requirements are well below the system specs of your computer. Also, make sure that the software that you are getting with it is the "full version" of the software that's offered by the software developer.
I hope that this has been of some help. Please let me know if I can provide any additional assistance

I've had mine for about 18 months. It will only do standard speed disks. It won't burn onto high speed ones. (Good idea to check out that stuff). I"ve got an X-box to play CD's and it will only play those burnt onto re-writable disks.

Note: cds not playing on other devices often have nothing to do with the CD burner but rather with the other devices.

Many cd walkmans cd players etc from 5 years ago will not play a CD-RW.

Hey there Stoat :-D Long time no see. Love the Avatar. The information you gave me is great and I thank you very much. It's a bit confusing, but I wrote some things down.

Dyslexia
I heard about those problems which is the reason for my question. Maybe you can figure out yours at the same time.

PDiddie
Thanks for the compliment and the info as well. I'm still confused, but, I'm determined to figure it out.

Hi there Wilso ;-) I have a Bose CD player and my son has this big Panasonic system that looks like a boom box and my plans for the burner are for me and my son to burn music that we can actually play on our CD players. My son has a burnt CD that won't play on either of our CD players and will only work on the computer. I don't have a CD player in my car, so that wouldn't really matter.

Craven
I know my sons Boom box thingy is only about 2 years old if that and my Bose is about 3 years old. Thanks for the info.

Hello Gezzy
It's nice to see you too! I'm glad that you like the picture; it's actually a pic of my Uncle Ermie, but we have a very close familial resemblance and so he lets me use it :wink:
Please let me know what I said that remains confusing and I will be happy to clarify.

Stoat
If you're half as cute at your uncle, you're gorgeous ;-) Actually, I read all this stuff at the same time, so things seemed a bit overwhelming at the time, but it all pretty much makes sense now. I think, LOL!

Thanks for your help. I'm clueless when it comes to this stuff.

Gezzy,

My time frame references are not exact. IMO it's a good idea to borrow a CD-RW from someone and test in on the equipment you have.

This can be very important because if recorded CDs do not work on your equipment a CD burner would be a waste.

Another thing I don't remember the particulars off the top of my head but there are two kinds of CDs to record on and one works on more appliancs than others. I think it's CD-R and CD-RW with CD-RW being the one that is less compatible.

I don't know anyone around here who has a burner, but thanks for the information Craven. I think you're right about the CD-R thing. I believe the one my son has is a CD-RW.

CD-Recordable FAQ

http://www.cdrfaq.org/

Thanks Larry ;-) I'll read that when I'm not so tipsy, lol! As you know, I just got married tonight :-D

I just went to that site and it looks awsome. Thanks Larry! You're so cool!!! :-D

Its a very romantic FAQ, you may want to think twice on that.

You don't want to read the FAQ because you want to go faq.

LOL Larry! I've actually been drinking some of my homemade wine all night and I really am tipsy at the moment. In fact, It wasn't easy typing this, LOL!