Rating: 
Summary: Great Drive, Great Service
Review: First off, Amazon.com's service and delivery have never let me down. They have no other online rivals.Now about the Pacific Digital drive... I have a Dell 8100 that originally came with Win ME. ME was terrible so I was glad to upgrade to XP last year. I say that because XP makes everything from digital photo downloads to CD burning a breeze. Pacific Digital's external USB 32x12x48 CD-RW drive works like a charm with XP. I had the older USB 1.1 ports but was able to install the USB 2.0 card (it comes with this drive) in minutes. Don't worry if XP doesn't act like you've installed the card. In fact, you don't even need to use the software and drivers that come with the drive. XP does the work for you. Install the 2.0 card, plug up the drive, and you're off. The drive comes with a blank CD-R disk (the non-rewritable type) in case you want to start using the drive immediately. As a test, I transferred over 60 MB of photos from my hard drive to the included CD-R disk. It took about 30 seconds. This drive is great piece of hardware. You won't regret getting it.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor supporting software
Review: I purchase the drive so I can copy information on my computer at work and take it home and copy or alter it on my home computer which has Easy CD Creator on it. This drive came with software by Oak Technology "SimpliCD". I have since found out that the formatting of the two systems are different and one cannot read the other. I would not recommend purchasing the drive if Oak Technology software is supplied.
The actual unit maybe okay but the supplied software is not, at least for my purpose
Rating:
Summary: Poor Quality Product - Zero Star Rating!
Review: I regret purchasing this product. While the burn process goes through to the end without any problems, about half the CD's have errors such that some of the files on them cannot be read - no matter which CD-ROM I try. I have tried recording from 4X to 16X speeds (mine will never record at 32X) - and it is always the same story. I use TDK media rated at 48X - and its the same story with other branded media - they fare even worse. I sure have as many coaster as good disks. The coasters were made even when the drive was cool - it does get rather hot after a couple of operations - so this is another thing to keep in mind. While it does get hot, there are no cooling vents. I bought this product because I was very happy with an earlier Pacific digital IDE based CDRW - which was a rebranded Mitsumi CDRW. I had expected them to excercise similar care with this product and expected that they would have used a CDRW internal drive that had good performance specs and could write reliably. The CDRW drive is made by a company called "Cyberdrive" and they probably have a lot to learn before they can make a drive that can write reliably. I am very dissapointed and plan to stay away from a Pacific Digital product next time around. I advise you to do the same.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I was hesitating before buying this item and even did not try it to write anything couple of days. I was thinking that I made wrong choice. But... everything had changed instantly, when I tried to write a clip on a disk. It went beyond my expectations. I was surprised by the writing speed of the drive. Now, I know that it was write choice. Moreover, if somebody wants take it overseas, he/she does not need to buy voltage converter. Its adapter is compatible with U.S. and European voltage standards. Great product. Never regret.
Rating:
Summary: $100 boat anchor
Review: I'm overseas and shipped one of these to someone to carry over for me. Was that a mistake. Not only was the USB card bad, the drive won't properly install on either of my machines. BTW, according to tech support the min processor speed for this device is 850 NOT the 500 Amazon lists. Explains one of the machines, but the other is a 1.1G, so perhaps the drive I got is bad...
Rating:
Summary: $100 boat anchor
Review: I'm overseas and shipped one of these to someone to carry over for me. Was that a mistake. Not only was the USB card bad, the drive won't properly install on either of my machines. BTW, according to tech support the min processor speed for this device is 850 NOT the 500 Amazon lists. Explains one of the machines, but the other is a 1.1G, so perhaps the drive I got is bad...
Rating: 
Summary: Not so great with Windows 98
Review: It might just be my "hand-built" computer, but I could not get the VIA USB 2.0 card included with this drive to work with my Windows ME machine (a 400 mHz Pentium II). The card was recognized, all of the appropriate drivers were automatically installed and it showed up as "working" in my Control Panel. It didn't. I finally dropped the card into my wife's Windows XP machine and it worked perfectly. Didn't even need to use the accompanying CD, it just recognized the card and configured it automatically. I read that Windows ME (and Windows 98) did not natively support USB 2.0 and that that USB 2.0 drivers had to be written by the card manufacturer. Windows XP already has native support for USB 2.0. Apparently, my Windows ME machine does not like the VIA drivers.
Rating:
Summary: Worked fine with XP, not with ME
Review: It might just be my "hand-built" computer, but I could not get the VIA USB 2.0 card included with this drive to work with my Windows ME machine (a 400 mHz Pentium II). The card was recognized, all of the appropriate drivers were automatically installed and it showed up as "working" in my Control Panel. It didn't. I finally dropped the card into my wife's Windows XP machine and it worked perfectly. Didn't even need to use the accompanying CD, it just recognized the card and configured it automatically. I read that Windows ME (and Windows 98) did not natively support USB 2.0 and that that USB 2.0 drivers had to be written by the card manufacturer. Windows XP already has native support for USB 2.0. Apparently, my Windows ME machine does not like the VIA drivers.
Rating:
Summary: Very poor information
Review: Never did instructions state unit was not mac compatible.
it was printed in very fine and very small type on very bottom of package side panel. Now must go through return/refund process what a pain. Proves never assume. Since unit was a USB port operation, thought it would work with PowerMac G3 unit. Baa Humbug!
Rating:
Summary: Very poor information
Review: Never did instructions state unit was not mac compatible.
it was printed in very fine and very small type on very bottom of package side panel. Now must go through return/refund process what a pain. Proves never assume. Since unit was a USB port operation, thought it would work with PowerMac G3 unit. Baa Humbug!
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