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i saw a 50 pack of maxell's on sale at staples for 9.94 but they were only 74min disc and they had a gold top label and i am used of seeing only 80 min with the silver label on top. Is the gold 74min better than the 80 min silver cdr's? i haven't seen 74mins since 2001

They're both made by Ritek, and both fairly good quality. If you like the price, go for them

I thought the gold top/74 minute discs are made by Hitachi Maxell (?) and Ian swears that they suck royally. These discs have cyanine dye, IIRC. The silver top/80 minute discs have phthalocyanine dye, and yes, they are made by Ritek.

My advice, stick to the 80 minute Ritek discs.

I've used both and the gold 650megs and silver 700 meg tops made by ritek. The Gold tops generally have lower c1 error rates. In my case on a 48246s drive about 0.200 cps. I was able to pick up a bunch of 100 packs when they were on sale at staples for 5 bucks + tax out the door. Now I regret not getting more.

As far as I can tell, the only discs made by Hitachi Maxell these days are the XL-S type (maxell 80XL-S for example). Although I"ve heard that Ritek also makes some of these.

From *my* experience, the hitachi maxell's have been quite good quality... however I've also heard that some drives are completely incompatible with them.

It could be my drives, but I doubt it because the top layer of the discs started flaking off, which is not a good sign for ANY disc. BTW, I am referring to CompUSA branded discs manufactured by Hitachi Maxell. Stay away from them!

ewww.... CompUSA disc in general are something to stay away from!

but as for the top flaking off, even Mitsui discs have this problem sometimes!

Yeah, key word = sometimes. I slowly watched all the CompUSA/HM discs I own flake off piece by piece. Luckily, I saved what data I could and reverted to backups of backups (which were burned on better discs) for the unsalvagable data.