Hey all,
As some of you may have read, I'm planning to get a DVD reader, probably a LG, Samsung or a LiteOn (or possibly an Aopen)
Anyway, another option I recently became aware of is I can get a Ricoh MP5420A which is a 4x4x (+R,+RW) burner. It's also 8x DVD read, 40x CD read, 24x CDR and 10x CDRW. Although this is by no means the best and def not the fastest burner, it's very cheap where I am (probably they've dumped the remaining stock on the suppliers here to get rid of).
Firstly, has anyone had any exp with this burner (also the Aopen DRW4410 since it's the same thing)? From what I read, it appears to be a decent enough burner, not as good as my brothers GSA-4163BBK perhaps but it looks like I'll be able to use it. The only bad thing I've come across is C't had probs with CDRs.
One potential issue I see is that it's firmware was last updated 24 March or so and I highly doubt I'm going to see anything new so I'm a bit worried it's going to get worse and worse as the newer high speed media comes out. Opinions?
Secondly, how significant do you think the loss of 16x read speed will be? I'm probably going to be mostly using it with DVD+/-Rs burnt in my brothers writer (and mine if I get one) and possibly a few others I get from friends and stuff. I don't expect to be dealing with that many true DVD-Roms. A few DVD-videos perhaps but probably not much ripping so this won't matter that much. This is significant since I wonder whether I will get to 16x read most of the time anyway due to the fact I'll mostly be dealing with burnt stuff. My brother has a good writer and we'll probably be burning mostly fairly ok quality CDs (Ricoh and similar). What do you think? Although I could be wrong, I suspect the Ricoh might actually be a better reader than a DVD-Rom (if I get one) so it may actually be faster on average?
The 40x CD read speed doesn't really worry me too much nor does the 24x CD write speed.
P.S. I currently have a CD writer but I'm unlikely to keep it if I get the DVD burner.
P.P.S. If you're interested in the readers I'm looking at
http://www.pricespy.co.nz/gid_20.html
P.P.P.S. I just found out that Toshiba and Samsung are jointly manufacturing drives. So I'm looking at a Toshiba/Samsung DVD reader (cheapest), LG DVD reader (middle), Aopen (middle), LiteOn (highest I think is worth it) and the Ricoh writer
