Hewlett Packard Plus 8100i CD-RW Burner
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- Enclosure Type: Internal
- Read Speed: 24x (CD)
- ReWrite Speed: 2x (CD-RW)
- Write Speed: 24x (CD)
- Burner Type: CD-RW
- Storage Type: Disk Drive
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Drive = Good , Software = Suck
Pros
Solid performer, good price, decent speed, strong brand
Cons
Adaptec Easy CD is suck, RW is useless, its IDE
Recommended it?
Yes
HP has a strong line of Cd-R and Cd-RW solutions that work very well, at a reasonable price. The HP 8100i fits right into this mold as a versatile brand name IDE burner that will not break the bank.
The Drive
The technology behind the burner is the Sony CRX110E drive and it works very well at 2x. I used this drive for over a year, and I usually did not run into any problems at 2x on my PII 400 128 mb ram machine. Of course I also would generally turn off all other programs and free up all available system resources to pull off 4x performance. And I still got a lot of frisbies due to buffer underruns.
I attribute this mainly to the awful Adaptec Easy CD Creator program that is part of the software bundle of the drive. I HIGHLY recommend you put Easy Cd in the microwave and find yourself a version of Nero or CDR-Win for your burning needs, unless you really need the ease of use that Easy CD brings into burning (Easy CD truly does make it easy).
About rewritability - ask yourself: do you need it? I really doubt it. It adds about $50 to the price of any burner solution and the CD-RW media themselves are pricey (~$10). With vanilla CD-R blanks costing about ~$1-2, I really cant imagine how CD-RW could be cost effective or worth the extra ~$50 for MOST users.
Conclusion
This is a good drive if you can get it at or below $200. Not the greatest, but good and solid. For power users, this drive might not cut it as it is not excellent in any single category and 4x speed drives are paling in front of the new 8x and 12x drives. Also IDE in general is less than desirable as compared to SCSI drives. This drive is a good choice for users at $200 level. Bad for power users. If you want to compare this drive, check out my review of the Imation Internal SuperRecorder 8X20 (aka Plexwriter 8/20).
The Drive
The technology behind the burner is the Sony CRX110E drive and it works very well at 2x. I used this drive for over a year, and I usually did not run into any problems at 2x on my PII 400 128 mb ram machine. Of course I also would generally turn off all other programs and free up all available system resources to pull off 4x performance. And I still got a lot of frisbies due to buffer underruns.
I attribute this mainly to the awful Adaptec Easy CD Creator program that is part of the software bundle of the drive. I HIGHLY recommend you put Easy Cd in the microwave and find yourself a version of Nero or CDR-Win for your burning needs, unless you really need the ease of use that Easy CD brings into burning (Easy CD truly does make it easy).
About rewritability - ask yourself: do you need it? I really doubt it. It adds about $50 to the price of any burner solution and the CD-RW media themselves are pricey (~$10). With vanilla CD-R blanks costing about ~$1-2, I really cant imagine how CD-RW could be cost effective or worth the extra ~$50 for MOST users.
Conclusion
This is a good drive if you can get it at or below $200. Not the greatest, but good and solid. For power users, this drive might not cut it as it is not excellent in any single category and 4x speed drives are paling in front of the new 8x and 12x drives. Also IDE in general is less than desirable as compared to SCSI drives. This drive is a good choice for users at $200 level. Bad for power users. If you want to compare this drive, check out my review of the Imation Internal SuperRecorder 8X20 (aka Plexwriter 8/20).
