Rating: 
Summary: Potentially Great Product - but Not All the Bugs Out Yet
Review: I've previously had several H-P CD recorders and found with them that they were progressively getting better with time - both in terms of construction and in terms of free software upgrades. So I was glad to see that H-P had a reasonably priced DVD recorder available and figured that they had most of the bugs worked out in their experience with the CD recorders. Sadly, the new DVD200e seems to be in the same spot that my first H-P CD recorder was, which is buggy. Initially I couldn't read the disks that I wrote in the same drive. But their free flash ROM upgrade on the H-P web site seems to have fixed that. But now I can't do a full system backup (which would be 12Gb) and finish filling even the first disk without an error - and this is even after I unloaded every in-memory service that it was safe to unload and on a blindingly fast machine. I'm pretty sure that H-P will fix their problems and provide further free software upgrades to resolve these difficulties (their tech support has always been good) - but in the meantime, the drive remains buggy.
Rating: 
Summary: Great hardware, but throw out the software
Review: Speaking as a newbie to dvd recording, this is a fine piece of hardware but you need to throw out the software that comes with this. With the software you'll not be able to 'back up' your purchased dvd's. The external drive is easy to plug in to your pc (assuming you've installed or have a USB 2.0 or Firewire card: required). To overcome the software problem dvdrhelp.com is an excellent help center, which has helped me understand what I need to get going. My suspicion is that most dvd recordable drives don't ship with software that immediately allows you to copy dvd's, so don't let this put you off an excellent recorder.
Rating: 
Summary: Pricey piece of [garbage]
Review: this device is severely limited in compatibility with CD-R media. have had a very difficult finding CD-R music cds that the device will burn. TDK worked for about 10 cds but now the drive wouldn't recognize TDK CD-R Music as Music discs. I'm pretty fed up with this piece of [garbage]and it's only 30 days old.
Rating:
Summary: Pricey piece of [garbage]
Review: this device is severely limited in compatibility with CD-R media. have had a very difficult finding CD-R music cds that the device will burn. TDK worked for about 10 cds but now the drive wouldn't recognize TDK CD-R Music as Music discs. I'm pretty fed up with this piece of [garbage]and it's only 30 days old.
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't work out of the box!
Review: This is my first experience with a writable DVD device, so I don't have much to compare it to. However, I thought with a name like HP it would be a quality device. It is finally working for me, but I had two major frustrations with it.
1. It didn't work when I plugged it in to my Firewire. I wasted 4 (expensive) DVD+R disks before calling HP's service number. They told me I had to upgrade the firmware for it to work (!), and I had to upgrade it using a USB connection instead of the Firewire. After I did that, it began to work using my Firewire.
2. The software that comes with it - HP DLA - that allows the device to be written to by dragging & dropping, or that allows a DVD+R disk to be appended to after an initial write, is incompatible with the software that came with Easy CD Writer Platinum 5.0. I thought that by uninstalling the Direct CD package (the Roxio equivalent of the HP DLA), I could at least keep the other Easy CD Writer software installed so that I could use the other packages, such as Soundstream, to easily create music CDs. However, this does not work. I had to completely uninstall Easy CD Writer. The HP software that comes bundled with the DVD writer does not include all the functionality that Easy CD Writer has.Now that I've gotten it to work, I'm glad I have it. But, it was a frustrating experience initially.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't work out of the box!
Review: This is my first experience with a writable DVD device, so I don't have much to compare it to. However, I thought with a name like HP it would be a quality device. It is finally working for me, but I had two major frustrations with it.
1. It didn't work when I plugged it in to my Firewire. I wasted 4 (expensive) DVD+R disks before calling HP's service number. They told me I had to upgrade the firmware for it to work (!), and I had to upgrade it using a USB connection instead of the Firewire. After I did that, it began to work using my Firewire.
2. The software that comes with it - HP DLA - that allows the device to be written to by dragging & dropping, or that allows a DVD+R disk to be appended to after an initial write, is incompatible with the software that came with Easy CD Writer Platinum 5.0. I thought that by uninstalling the Direct CD package (the Roxio equivalent of the HP DLA), I could at least keep the other Easy CD Writer software installed so that I could use the other packages, such as Soundstream, to easily create music CDs. However, this does not work. I had to completely uninstall Easy CD Writer. The HP software that comes bundled with the DVD writer does not include all the functionality that Easy CD Writer has. Now that I've gotten it to work, I'm glad I have it. But, it was a frustrating experience initially.
Rating:
Summary: Piece of junk!!!...
Review: Was not compatible with our computer (and our computer is brand new with Windows XP!). With more jerking around we probably could have gotten the unit to work, but with the price you pay for it you shouldn't have to go to great lengths. The one DVD we did get to work was not good quality. We were very discouraged with this product and don't recommend anyone buying it.
Rating:
Summary: Piece of junk!!!...
Review: Was not compatible with our computer (and our computer is brand new with Windows XP!). With more jerking around we probably could have gotten the unit to work, but with the price you pay for it you shouldn't have to go to great lengths. The one DVD we did get to work was not good quality. We were very discouraged with this product and don't recommend anyone buying it.
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