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Ian (ian@cdrlabs.com)
Hardware Editor and News Poster - Contact Ian if you would like CDRLabs.com to review your products or if you have any interesting news.

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System Administrator and Webmaster

Who we are:
The majority of the people here at CDRlabs.com started as ops in #cdr on Efnet a few years ago. This was way before every kid on the block had a CD-RW. We maybe had at most 20 people in the channel at a time. About a year or two ago the CD-R industry exploded. Dropping media and hardware prices and the ability to put 650mb or even 700mb onto a disk and take it with you became appealing to everyone. People kept asking if there was a really good website for CD-R information. Unfortunately there was not at the time. A few "hardware review sites" would do a review from time to time, but the depth and consistency of the reviews turned out to be less than desirable. A plan was hatched to create a CDR Zone, a portal to the world of CD-R related reviews and topics. When having a portal was not good enough, the CDR Labs was spawned to give the world what it was lacking: useful, truthful information, quality reviews of hardware and software, and an eye to the CD-R Industry. Welcome to CDRLabs.

In research, you are urged to be skeptical of information until you know the people behind the experiment and the methods used to bring results. We would not want you to think otherwise. Every review we do will have explicit details about what test systems we used, what methodology was used, and what benchmarking software was used.

For example, we could tell you that a certain CD-R has buffer underrun problems, and therefore should be avoided. But what if we were burning at 8x off of a USB Zip Drive? Would that change your mind as to the quality of our testing, and our ability to give you a straight recommendation? Of course it would. When components are tested, you will know the machine driving that component down to the very last detail so you can judge our work. You will be able to make an educated decision. That is our mantra.

Furthermore, what qualifies any of us to bring this to you? All of us work in the computer industry in some form. From designing supercomputers for Cray Inc. to being a systems administrator at a Big 10 college, our staff have a large knowledge base and a wide variety of experience. Our real jobs keep us in touch with technology, and that makes us able to offer insights that you would not be able to get elsewhere.

Our goals:
To bring a website dedicated to bringing truthful, informative reviews and news to the CD-R community. Too many other hardware review sites were doing what we considered to be poor benchmarking and reviewing of drives and others were just re-worded Press Releases. Other sites supposedly dedicated to CD-R information were reporting rumors as truth and many were tied into piracy and other illegal activities.

After CDRZone.com, we stood back and looked at the highlights and lowlights of the reviews we had done and ones we had read on other websites and created the CDRLabs' Tome of Benchmarking. We pledge that CDRLabs will give you the best of previews, reviews, and related Industry news.