Rating: 
Summary: FRUSTRATED BEYOND BELIEF #***IT DOES NOT WORK***#
Review: *IT DOES NOT WORK*THIS DEVICE SHOULD GET ZERO STARS*
IT HAS NOT WORKED RIGHT; IT DOES NOT WORK RIGHT;
ONE STAR IS OVERSTATED; IT IS FRUSTRATING BEYOND BELIEF.
DO NOT BUY UNLESS YOU HAVE MUCH TIME TO WASTE.
In my experience, it is one of the worst devices I have ever owned. It is no wonder it is so cheap; it is almost useless. Using it has been frustrating beyond belief. I have wasted days trying to get consistent results. It is plug and PRAY!
You follow all the instructions scrupulously, you laod a CD and a CDR. In less than two minutes, your computer is completely frozen. All you can do is pull the plug. It is impossible to shut down!
The installation instructions and software are incomplete and ambiguous. The website is incomplete, ambiguous and a mess with thousands of inquiries on how to do the simplest of tasks (e.g., how to load the USB driver for XP - hello, is anyone in TDKland living & breathing?). The TDK marketing philosophy seems to be slap it together. Why worry about user instructions?
It is apparent that TDK rushed this device to market to be "competitive" and as an outlet for its media. Just one problem:
P>The customer support is a joke: a mere repetition of a variety of the nostrums dispensed on the website with a recommendation that you also go to other websites to download other drivers - Nero being one of them. Then, it is a campaign to blame everything else: your computer, the USB device, the co-branded software, the media, the original disk. You get the picture: everyone is wrong but TDK.
P>When all is said and done, the solution to everything is: reload other drivers, get a new ______ (fill in the blank with anything you like), use a slower speed (why advertise 32X for the machine and for the media {TDK CR-Rs do NOT work at 32X!}), go back to USB 1.1 or use TDK media. Hello, why buy a USB2 machine if not for the faster speed? Why waste all this time on this piece of junk? Why pay the extra money?
P>THIS MACHINE IS A FRAUD; IT IS JUNK; IT DOES NOT DELIVER ON ITS PROMISES
Save your time and money; buy something else. Did I mention that
Apart from all of this, it is a great doorstopper, especially for the bathroom, with the softly glowing green LED. Stops me from stubbing my toe at night.
Rating: 
Summary: Fast + Reliable
Review: I bought this burner to replace my old 16X burner which was also TDK. I decided to go with TDK again. After I opened the box and read the instructions I installed this with no problems at all (the only thing that might give you a problem are the jumpers). TDK included everything you would need plus more. They even included two CD-Rs and a CD-RW along with a marker to label your cds. The performance is great. I can burn a full 700 MB CD in under 3 minutes now. Great value and performance overall.
Rating:
Summary: Fast + Reliable
Review: I bought this burner to replace my old 16X burner which was also TDK. I decided to go with TDK again. After I opened the box and read the instructions I installed this with no problems at all (the only thing that might give you a problem are the jumpers). TDK included everything you would need plus more. They even included two CD-Rs and a CD-RW along with a marker to label your cds. The performance is great. I can burn a full 700 MB CD in under 3 minutes now. Great value and performance overall.
Rating: 
Summary: Works great - if you have the time to configure it
Review: i bought this burner with the highest expectations. I've had a plexwriter, a QPS, an HP before this, so i've had experience with high end brand-name burners. I had purchased the QPS Que 40x and returned it the same day after reading the high/positive ratings the TDK received. After installing it, i was nothing but disappointed. it wouldn't burn a cd faster than 10 minutes, with almost a 100 buffer-underruns each time. It hung my system, w/c by the way is a brand new dell - 2ghz, win 2k, 512 ram, 80gb hdd. after plenty of analysis, trips to the website and coasters, i finally called the tech support 800 #. they were great (except for a rude comment i heard the tech make when he thought i wasn't listening), very patient and helpful - w/c eventually led to us figuring out that this burner does not work with Zone Alarm's Firewall. (why, i don't know) It also needs to be configured for DMA and running the updated nero/wnaspi.dll/firmware, etc. it works great now - i'm a DJ - so i do lots of successive burns and get lots of use out of my burner. after giving me atleast 30 bad cd's in the first week, its now working like a charm - not a coaster in sight and blazing speeds. Can't recommend this burner higher than a 3 because of all the setup/initial problems - but i can tell u that once all the kinks are worked out, its a beauty!!
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic, and easy to install
Review: I installed it myself. The instructions were clear. The technicians at work told me it was easy to do, and following the instructions it was. I called a tdk technican just to ask a few questions. He answered my questions and I turned it on and it worked. Love it. Eileen Szatmari. If I can do it anyone can
Rating:
Summary: Great Product
Review: I just got this burner today. Installed it with no problem. I'm 17 just to prove that ANYONE can do it. Well after it was installed, I wanted to see how fast it could go. Boy did it move. I burned a full music cd in about 3 minutes, like the box said. I also burned a 550 mb file to the cd in about the same amount of time. I recommend it. For some reason, the rebate isn't on the site anymore but email amazon and you can probably get it....
Rating:
Summary: Great Product
Review: I just got this burner today. Installed it with no problem. I'm 17 just to prove that ANYONE can do it. Well after it was installed, I wanted to see how fast it could go. Boy did it move. I burned a full music cd in about 3 minutes, like the box said. I also burned a 550 mb file to the cd in about the same amount of time. I recommend it. For some reason, the rebate isn't on the site anymore but email amazon and you can probably get it....
Rating:
Summary: Toss up between PlexWriter and TDK...
Review: I visited Amazon.com about 5 times before I finally clicked the "one click purchase" button and bought the TDK CDRW 40x...but I'm glad I did! Installation was very easy into my Dell Dimension 700mhz desktop. I was a bit concerned initially about the front face plate of the TDK not fitting flush with the case, but a little push on the case and it went right in. I cabled it up as the master with my existing Dell CD reader as the slave. All factory settings and jumpers were adequate and correct for the installation (no adjustments needed). First burn was a data archive using the 80min/700mb media that came with the unit. 475mb of all types of data wrote in 4 minutes! That would have taken over 30 minutes on my old unit. Good diagnostics and reporting followed a quick verification of writing. ...I'm sure the PlexWriter is just as good of a unit, but I'm happy and ahead in the cash department.
Rating: 
Summary: Good looks, but doesn't live up to expectations
Review: I was very impressed with the looks of both the hardware and software that came with this product with its impressive price tag. Being a loyal TDK consumer since its 5 1/4" floppy disk drive days, I took into confidence on their new venture into CD-RWs. When I took it home, I was very comfortable with plugging components in and out of my desktop with their installation chart. So I whizzed through the hardware installation part. The software installation was a breeze too, thanks to the care taken in making sure that the CD-burner software was user friendly. I was happy until that phase. Then things started to go wrong. TDK's software didn't allow me to burn CD-to-CD. Music or data CD. And then, when I did an audio CD-rip and then burnt it into a blank CD-R, it worked. I wasn't too happy because that meant that I had to stick around the PC and wait til it finished ripping the audio before I can use the "Create an audio CD" option. The complete ripping and burning process took about 15 minutes. Pretty impressive, on a 350 MHz Dell box. I listened to it the next day and most of the tracks were skipping. The CD player was reading a-Ok, its just the resulting burn wasn't as smooth as they claimed. Their burn-proof technology may need to be re-looked at. Or maybe, if you have Adaptec's CD creator, the results may be different. Here, I'm just giving TDK the benefit of the doubt. I don't own that software but I know others that do never had problems with any hardware. I'm actually shopping for a CD-RW drive again. It's unfortunate. I've de-installed the drive and repacked it to be returned. Heard Plextor's drives are pretty good, but hey, hearing about it isn't everything until you've tried it yourself.
Rating:
Summary: This burner is quick!
Review: I was very impressed with the speed of this CD-ROM burner. When I first tried it I copied from one CD drive to another, and I didn't see a lot of improvement. Don't make the same mistake unless your source drive is fast as well. Then I used the TDK for both the source and the destination. Wow! The source CD was 317 MB of mixed media and it was complete in under 3 minutes. I would recomend this CD-ROM burner if you are looking to upgrade your ATAPI CD-RW.
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