Lite-On 52 X 24 X 52

I purchased this terrific Lite-ON 52 X 24 X 52 CD-RW drive from staples for around $50. I beleive that the manual was written very well, but I wouldnt know, as I did not really read it--I previously knew how to install components onto my computer. Ok, now on to the hardware specs. It has an excellently laid out "Back"--the installation of the burner was easy enough for any neophyte--even an 11 yr old could do it. However, once it is installed, Nero and all, you can burn cd's at lighting speed, and with out any buffer underruns. I said that i would explain buffer underruns and what causes them, and why the technology is soo good to have--especially for you people who have a computer that is slower than 1000 mhz (1 ghz). What causes a buffer underunn is that the computer has a reserve of about 2mb (mega bytes) that it will write to and re-fill constantly. Since computers can multitask, you can surf the internet or play solitare while your computer writes and refills the buffer. The problem is when the computer cannot do what you want it to (surf the internet ...etc.) and write and refill the buffer. When the burner burns the buffer out, and theres nothing left, a buffer underrun occurs, and the cd is unusable [for the most part]. What is special about this burner, and mant other new burners out there is that it can detect and prevent those underruns. if you need any help with anything related to this burner, you can email me at [email protected]..

I purchased the Lite-ON 52246s from Dabs.com at 16.50 on 10th June 2003, there was a knock on the door at 8.15am on 11th June 2003, and there stood the man from Parcel Force with my delivery. I eagerly opened the box and checked the correct items were delivered. Then came the tricky part of reading the instructions (I thought I would break the habit of a lifetime and have a go and read the instructions first for a change) and opening the computer up to install the writer. In the box was the writer, audio cable, 4 screws, installation guide, 1 re-write disc, 1 blank CD and Ahead Nero burning CD. Unfortunately I was unable to install the writer on its own IDE port as too many other drives are fitted, but all went well and the writer was installed. Next the Ahead Nero was installed, so far so good, no problems. Next was to try and copy a music CD,

(One of the main reasons to purchase, was to copy all my CDs for me to play in the car) now, the other optical drive I have left installed was a 16X DVD/CD drive, in went the music CD into the DVD drive and a blank CD-R into the Lite-ON Rewriter, clicking onto the Ahead Nero software the wizard appears, a few clicks later and the burning begins, it copied the CD in 4 minutes, I then tried copying some data from my hard drive, again the wizard shows you what to do, I copied 651mb of data in 7 minutes, the system I am running is a 500 AMD-K6 processor, with 384mb ram.

The drive fitted in easily and comes in the same off white colour as does pretty much all drives. The opening mechanism opens and closes cleanly, and is a lot quieter than my other two drives. I have so far copied 20 CDs and copied 4 more CDs worth of data; as yet I have produced no coasters. I have yet to use the RW CD but if that works as well as the rest hopefully there should be no problems, I will report later if I run into any problems. I am very pleased with writer and couldn't believe it was only £34.50, I decided to purchase it after reading reviews about the previous Lite-ON CD writers.