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I have read alot of reviews and am trying to decide upon a DVD burner for my laptop... Of course, since it is a laptop I'll need an external, because I want to have a super-multi as well as lightscribe...

Do you recommend the HP DVD840e or the LG GSA-2166D

I have read on many sites that both tend to have some writing quality problems, so I was wondering what I should do...

Also, is buying something like an LG GSA-4166B and putting it into an external enclosure an option, and would you recommend that?

Some other general questions:

Can you use the 1.02 firmware for the 4166B on the 2166D? The only available firmware for the 2166D is the 1.01 version...

Also, in a review of the DVD840e it says that since the drive has a panasonic chipset, it doesn't support something to do with regions... What does this mean exactly? Here is the review I got this from: http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews ... 4&PageId=0
If the same drives are in teh 2166D and the HP840e, this would be the case for the 2166D

and are the writing problems associated with the 2166D and DVD+R mentionable? http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.ph ... erformance

Sorry about the long post, and thanks if you can shed some light on this...

cdrinfo just means that you cannot manually set the region. This isn't a big deal if you're not planning to play DVD's from other parts of the world.

I'm not sure if LG has improved the writing quality on the 2166D. I know they have on the 4166B, but that drive is also one firmware version ahead. IMO, its kinda dumb that they haven't released the 1.02 firmware for it yet.

Since the release of the 4166/2166, a few other good LightScribe drives have been released. You might want to look into putting a BenQ DW1655 in an external case.

So would you not recommend getting this? The one you recommended doesn't have RAM :S

If you need RAM, the Lite-On SHM-165H6S is another option.