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Hewlett Packard CD-Writer C4504A 8220e 4x4x6 External USB Kit

Hewlett Packard CD-Writer C4504A 8220e 4x4x6 External USB Kit

List Price: $187.00
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Shame on Hewlett Packard
Review: Hewlett Packard is a strong brand name. Whomever's responsible for the selection, negotiation and licensing of the software for Hewlett Packard CD writers should be fired. We immediately had problems with the machine identifying a high speed disc (which was incorrect). Rather than go forward ( I had read the reviews ) we downloaded the new "Click & Burn" software which worked effortlessly. Hewlett Packard owes its customers a better product and an apology.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Every machine has a few kinks
Review: I purchased my CD-writer about a couple of months ago and it was nice and easy to set up. I really didnt have any problems with that. But once i got started and ready to burn not all my songs showed up and weren't ready for burning. I had to take a lot of my mp3's and convert them to wave and that was quite annoying. And i can't even convert songs that i got from other cd's and put on my computer. So i mean all the songs i can burn are the ones i downloaded and then converted. I mean other than that the writer works well and i've had no other problems. I think it's been a good investment.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: I spent too much for a rotten apple.
Review: Now I do not know to much about CD Rewritables (Burners), that is why I have my friends who know more about it help me out. The main problem is I cannot burn blank CD's, unless they are Hewlett Packard brand. That's right! I was able to burn 1 blank CD that was given with the CD-Writer. I bought a 50 pack of Memorex blank CD's & screwed up 7 of them. I even had my friends try to help & they couldn't do anything. It made me so mad & frustrated. It would always give me an error. But it works fine with the HP brand. My computer is not HP either, I don't know if that had any other affect, but I truly do not recommend this product.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not able to write a single CD
Review: I bought this cd-writer three weeks ago, I have made 30 attempts and not any CD has been written yet, I have followed the company support without any success. The software since to be the problem, and HP seems not to be able to solve the problem. It was a waste, it uses my time and takes my money. Don't buy before HP sell it with a more reliable software.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not able to write a single CD
Review: I bought this cd-writer three weeks ago, I have made 30 attempsts and not any CD has been written yet, I have followed the company support without any success. The software since to be the problem, and HP seems not to be able to solve the problem. It was a waste, it uses my time and takes my money. Don't buy before HP sell it with a more reliable software.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Update to my March 6 review--software limitations
Review: Now that I've had a chance to use this machine for almost 3 months, my 4 stars remain the same. I'm more impressed with the machine itself than before--I've burned about 4 dozen audio discs, as well as used a few more as data discs. There was one instance of an ongoing skip in one track that messed up the beat, but I think that might have been a flaw in that file--tracks before and after that one (as well as discs burned since) have been OK. Other reviewers who have found this machine nearly unusable might very well have gotten a broken one. They are right about the software, though. For all its versatility (as in how I formatted the discs I'm using as data discs), it still has that annoying problem of rejecting files that were ripped in the wrong format. There's a way around that, though--the freebie MusicMatch software I use to rip files also does CDs. It takes a long time--about an-hour-and-a-half (and it does not recognize the existence of 80min blanks--ALL discs are 74min)--but it'll burn those pesky "wrong format" files. To avoid that delay on more discs than I have to, I just store up all the rejects in a separate folder and do 'em all at once. The title of that disc (picture Nat King Cole's voice)--"Un-buh-burnable". As for that "coaster" problem some other users are having, my only coasters are my own fault--burning a disc before finding out whether or not there's an incomplete file in its playlist, then re-doing it on another disc once I have a replacement for that file. Between the two programs, there hasn't been anything but a WAV clip that I can't burn. I use it to "warehouse" MP3 files for archival purposes, which is essential if you save music but have only a few-gig hard drive. This gizmo has already paid for itself in keeping me in tunes in 3 lousy months.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Trouble
Review: This is the second HP CD-Writer I purchased from HP and I expected the same great performance. I was disappointed. The product installed quickly, but I had the first sign of trouble reading a Rewriteable CD that contained data from my first HP drive. After erasing some directories, the CD became unreadable and hung the system. After powering down, all the data was gone and I couldn't read it on the other drive.

I call HP and they walked me through the installation process in safe mode, but this did not fix the problem and it happened again with a second disk. I installed the drive on a second computer and it happened again. HP told me that it might be the Memorex media and I should use 'higher quality' media.

I believe this, but then tried burning an ISO file and after 3 disks failed to finish, I gave up. In the end, I probable spent 8 hours trying to get this drive to work and HP's techical support wasn't much help.

Drive was sent back and I'll either go for an internal drive or one from another manufacturer. I never did figure out what the root cause was, but either its HP's hardware, their drivers, or both of my computers have non-standard USB ports. Since I have Dell Laptops, I would expect they had 'standard' USB ports. Frustrated.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good Item for the price
Review: This is a good product for the price. Easy to install, however the software could be a little better for photos.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: DON'T BUY THIS IF YOU ARE USING DELL C600 LATITUDE
Review: I spent about 6 hours to get this thing working. Repeatedly contacted HP customer service, and was mislead to downloading the wrong software from Dell's website, then was referred to Dell for help. Spent another two hours re-booting and adjusting the BIOS, and still it didn't work.. The USB support software is incompatible with my machine. If you own Dell do yourself a favour and buy something else.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Ensure you get the software update!!!
Review: The hardware to this model, although slow, works fine. It is the software provided that is a nightmare. With the original software I wasted 6 CD-Rs. This was very frustrating, because it was so easy to set up, and walked you through a fairly straight forward process to copy a disk, and then even said that the CD had been successfully written to....you just could not read anything off of it, and could not use the CD again! After putting the CD-RW aside for a couple of days, I decided to reinstall it. There is an option to update your software during installation....do it! Since updating my software, I have made 3 CDs successfully, without a failure.


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