Which external CD burner for a laptop?

[Tonearm]

I need to get an external CD burner for my laptop for ripping and burning audio CDs. Which would be the one to go for? I suppose I could connect to it via USB or Firewire (if I get a PCMCIA Firewire card), but it seems like there should be a PCMCIA drive available and wouldn't that be better?

I'm going to check out the internal Dell CD-RW drive for my Inspiron 7500 laptop, but I'm betting it's not an expert at precise audio ripping and burning.

[KCK]

You may put any internal IDE burner in an external 5.25" enclosure with USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 (FireWire) interfaces, such as ME-320U2F of Welland (www.welland.com.tw), also available at NewEgg

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.a ... 14&order=1

I have been using ME-320F (FireWire) with Lite-On LTR48125W for nine months on my notebooks (98SE and XP) without any problem.

Even "generic" PCMCIA FireWire cards should work on your Inspiron 7500, but USB 2.0 could be more delicate (also depending on your OS). For concrete recommendations, you may search Dell Community Forum

http://delltalk.us.dell.com/supportforu ... d=inspiron

especially the PC Card Peripherals and USB/IEEE-1394 boards.

[Tonearm]

Thanks KCK, I may do something like that.

After going over the reviewed units at CDRInfo.com I like the Plextor PX-S88TU. Does anyone know how that one would work for my purposes?

[KCK]

You may read Ian's review of Plextor PX-S88TU here (click "Reviews" at the top). That model is almost 2 years old, so I would look for something more recent, e.g., Lite-On LXR-40243A/B, LXR-40122A/B/C/D or LXR-24101A.

I would choose an external "slim" model only if I wanted to carry it around (don't forget that sometimes an additional power supply unit is needed as well). With many manufacturers, their "slim" models lack certain features of internal IDE models, and their firmware is not updated as frequently. On the other hand, many "non-slim" external drives are simply internal drives with external enclosures, and it may be cheaper to buy the drive and enclosure separately.