is the BTC 1008IM that bad?

[liteonrules]

i've been doing the search thing on this website but only found a few things. i am about to buy a microadvantage@officemax for my brother that has the btc 1008im inside. 89.99minus 10.00 visa coupon minus 15.00gift card 50.00rebate total cost after savings is $14.00

is it that bad of a burner? i have a feeling that officemax will have the khypermedia on sale next week that will come out the same price but i am not totally sure

[Halc]

For that price it is a good reader and will burn "usable" (not great, not even good necessarily) burns on few selected quality DVD media.

That's all it is, imho.

Trying to use it as a general purpose burner is really pushing it, imho.

I base this on the user reports and c't magazine tests of the unit.

[Wesociety]

Since you have an OM giftcard, I would highly recommend holding out for another sale on the MadDog burners, which are mostly OEM NEC DVD writers.
Then you'll have one of the best burners on the market instead of one of the worst!

[digitaldoc]

Be careful with the new MadDog burners; they have switched from NEC to Artec for their 12x writer. I have the BTC burner; I agree with the view that Wesociety expresses. I only paid $50 2 months ago for it. It is a great reader of both cd's and dvd's. It is a great cd writer. For the price of a combo drive, I viewed the dvd writing as a "bonus feature." It produces variably usable discs on DVD+R media written at 4x.

Bottom line:

1- You get what you pay for.

2- If you just want to dabble, it's not terrible.

3- I buy a new optical drive every 6 months, and will be happy to swap this one out.

[liteonrules]

i bought it and i did some testing with codeguys Write-Speed Tool for BTC DVD-Writers and i updated all the 4x coded media to 8x. i burned the 4x speed media maxell,memorex,fuji to 8x and then i tried watching it on my home dvd player but the dvds kept freezing, so i then reburned them at 4x and they worked fine,so i guess this is a decent 4x burner but not 8x since i still can't get any 8x blanks in my area. i will take this back and wait for the khpermedia 8x dvd+r to go onsale next week.