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Rating: 
Summary: MiniCDRW
Review: I ordered the Archos MiniCDRW after reading a review saying this device supported USB under Windows 2000. I was delighted to discover my order also came with a PCMCIA interface. I now have used both interfaces, the PCMCIA with my Pentium 150MMX notebook and the USB with my Celleron 333 desktop, both under Windows 2000. I have only limited experience with this tool, but haven't made a CD coaster yet.The greatest problem I faced was figuring out how to get the drive open. There is a label explaining "Lid may not open until drivers are installed", but what it didn't say was "the READY lamp must be off for the drive to open". I'm not small and almost broke the device while attempting to carefully open it. I expected the lid to pop open by itself as many other drives do, this one does not. The fact that it doesn't is was probably a design trade-off to keep the drive small. Pressing the yellow button to open the lid toggles the READY lamp on and off after the drivers are correctly installed. The lid does have some resistance to opening even when it is in a state to allow opening. So far I successfully burned a CD-R from a package of TDK 80min blanks purchased at Costco, used the delivered CD-RW, and a Memorymedia CD-RW from work. I think I am happy with this product and gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because in two days I experienced 2 false write failures and the drive was difficult to open. The failures were false because the disk was still usable on the second try.
Rating:
Summary: MiniCDRW
Review: I ordered the Archos MiniCDRW after reading a review saying this device supported USB under Windows 2000. I was delighted to discover my order also came with a PCMCIA interface. I now have used both interfaces, the PCMCIA with my Pentium 150MMX notebook and the USB with my Celleron 333 desktop, both under Windows 2000. I have only limited experience with this tool, but haven't made a CD coaster yet. The greatest problem I faced was figuring out how to get the drive open. There is a label explaining "Lid may not open until drivers are installed", but what it didn't say was "the READY lamp must be off for the drive to open". I'm not small and almost broke the device while attempting to carefully open it. I expected the lid to pop open by itself as many other drives do, this one does not. The fact that it doesn't is was probably a design trade-off to keep the drive small. Pressing the yellow button to open the lid toggles the READY lamp on and off after the drivers are correctly installed. The lid does have some resistance to opening even when it is in a state to allow opening. So far I successfully burned a CD-R from a package of TDK 80min blanks purchased at Costco, used the delivered CD-RW, and a Memorymedia CD-RW from work. I think I am happy with this product and gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because in two days I experienced 2 false write failures and the drive was difficult to open. The failures were false because the disk was still usable on the second try.
Rating:
Summary: It works for both Win98 and Win2000 but...
Review: This is one of only two USB enabled CDR/RWs in the market. And this is the only one that come with Win2000 driver. Very compact and protable (size of a portable CD player). It also come with a very nice, full-featured CDBurning/UDF software from Ahead corp.(Germany) -- equal or beter than my Adaptec CDCreator/DirectCD 4.02D. The only issue is that the fail rate is higher on the Win2000. The reason is that USB is not a fast device and it needs CPU to keep it running. But, better than nothing on the Win2k platform for a USB CDR/RW. It works with my notebooks and desktops.
Rating:
Summary: It works for both Win98 and Win2000 but...
Review: This is one of only two USB enabled CDR/RWs in the market. And this is the only one that come with Win2000 driver. Very compact and protable (size of a portable CD player). It also come with a very nice, full-featured CDBurning/UDF software from Ahead corp.(Germany) -- equal or beter than my Adaptec CDCreator/DirectCD 4.02D. The only issue is that the fail rate is higher on the Win2000. The reason is that USB is not a fast device and it needs CPU to keep it running. But, better than nothing on the Win2k platform for a USB CDR/RW. It works with my notebooks and desktops.
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