Ian wrote:Howard Kaikow wrote:The 162 is USB 2,
You're right but I was thinking more about power than speed.
I don't know why, but there really aren't a lot of external drives out there right now. Samsung has a few but as Howard found out, they're hard to find in the US. Otherwise, Plextor and Lite-On have a few but they're all based on Lite-On designs. I haven't had too much luck with Lite-On's external DVD writers. For whatever reason, they never write at the maximum speed. LG also has the GE20LU10 and GE20LU11 but I haven't heard too much about them.
Actually, they are not hard to find. There are obstacles to overcome.
1. The poorly trained telephone folkes.
a. When I called Samsung, the person I spoke to knew only about 8x models.
b. When I called Pioneer, the person I spoke to could not even point me to a list of current models.
2. The web sets are not organized properly.
It seems that when you search for products at, say, Pioneer and SAmsung's web sites, you get list of current 8x models.
To see the 20x+ models, you have to go to their "business" or "professional" web pages. Most users are not going to go there.
Web pages need to be organized by product, not business group.
It's obvious that the companies vopied the web sructure from each other, like lemmings going over a cliff.
You could find a list of all models at the support pages, but that does not tell you which models are in current production.
Then you need to find the drives at your favorite onlive vendor, sometimes that's not easy, as the sites push the 8x model.