LITEON 24x10x40 CD/RW REVIEW
by Ian Urie (Technical Editor PC)
I decided to upgrade my CD/RW ...must be a P.C. thing, this
upgrading, I never felt the urge to upgrade the CD on the Amiga. In
fact, I was over the moon that my Amiga could use a CD, a re-writer
was an impossible dream!!
However, times change.
So, as I was saying, it was time to get a faster re-writer. My
original one that came with the machine was a Samsung DVD combo drive
that wrote at X4 speed, and I was feeling less and less enchanted
waiting for 20 minutes to burn an 80 minute audio disk.
The drive was faultless, it was simply now too slow for me.
I searched around and had a look at SVP Communications website
http://www.121cdr.co.uk/ ...a Company that I have used in the past,
initially from a friend's recommendation and afterwards from personal
experience.
SVP had a few writers for sale and I perused the list. One of the
drives they recommended was a Liteon drive. I had only vaguely heard
of Liteon, but the site links to reviews and tests of the drives.
This is a nice touch for anyone wanting to find out more about
products to help make up their mind The drive in question is a
24x10x40, that is, it writes at 24 speed, rewrites at 10 and reads at
40. So, a very fast drive. Prices of drives are dropping all the
time and the Liteon was no exception. It came in at apprx. £90.
I had initially been looking at the Plextor, but SVP is very honest
and upfront about all they sell, and had commented about why they
stocked Liteon... They had taken one unit and been so impressed,
that they had started to stock more Liteon products.
I read the tests and the Liteon came out roughly even with the
Plextor, although the Plextor has a 4mb buffer and the Liteon only
2mb. Both drives are burnproof (they have software to prevent buffer
underruns). Since the Plextor was over £120, I decided to give the
Liteon a try.
After the drive was delivered.. a couple of days, dependant on when
you order from the site, I set about fitting it.
I decided to make a straight swop with the Samsung. A few minutes
sufficed to undo the cover on the computer (after switching off and
unplugging everything), and remove the older drive. My old drive was
set for Secondary slave and the leaflet that came with the drive
showed how to link the Liteon for the same. After doing so, another
couple of moments to couple everything back up and replace covers in
the order they came off. I was quite surprised to find how easy it
was to fit the drive. It comes with leads, but the leads on the
Samsung were the same, so no point in changing them. Once this was
done, it was a boot and the drive was recognised.
The Liteon comes supplied with an Ide, sorry E-Ide lead, audio lead
and a leaflet showing the backplane of the drive, to show where the
leads go and how to configure the link on the drive. This is due to
the fact that the manual isn't of the printed variety, but a PDF
document on the software that comes with the drive. The CD has Nero
on it and is a very nice , easy writing package to use. Since the
Liteon is a fairly new drive, you may need to upgrade your burning
software to get it to recognise the drive, if you decide not to use
the version of Nero that comes with it. CD Creator 4 didn't
recognise it, but the Roxio site says that it is supported in Disk
Creator 5. CloneCd also supports it as I had a look at their site as
well.
How does the drive do? Excellent, mate!!
An 80 minute disk takes just over 3½ minutes, so it's no slouch. The
review of the drive said it didn't write at less than x8, but of the
rewritables I use for backup, a couple are x2 and one is a x4. The
Liteon handles them all beautifully. Maybe they meant it wouldn't
write normal CD/RW's at less than x8, but I don't have any disks that
are as slow as that and I've never bothered to go that slow to check
it out.
The burnproof technology in the Liteon is called Smart-burn and
Smart X. You can actually hear the drive slow and speed up while its
burning. No more wondering if I'll get away with burning while
online....
I had a look at the drive when I first took it out of the box, it
doesn't look any different from any other. The Liteon logo is on the
drawer of the drive and, those all important figures are on the front
of the drive as well. There is a headphone jack and a volume control
as well as an LED on the lhs of the unit front and the eject button
is on the rhs. The LED glows red when burning and green when
reading...
On the back of the drive, you have the e-ide interface, the digital
audio socket, the analogue audio socket and the power socket. Again,
nothing out of the ordinary.
The case looks ok and is tidily built. I find it hard to fault this
drive and at the price is a nice alternative to the more expensive
Plextor. You could do a lot worse than get one of these. As for the
buffer, it does tend to empty, but doesn't slow the drive down that
much, maybe the next model will have a larger one.
A highly recommended upgrade for all those that use a Cd-writer and
don't want to shell out for a Plextor or Yamaha.
