HP CD-Writer 8230e

I think if your think of get a burn get a HP cos they the best - Advantages: lots of different way to put music on, is still working after over a year, very easy to use - Disadvantages: a bit slow

I bought this as a gift for my girlfriend, she has an HP laptop. I am a techie and I have much experience with installing things like this. The initial install was problematic, after installing the drivers, the 8230 and the internal laptop cd stopped working. HP tech support tried to get it working but I ended up re-installing Win 2000. That really sucked. The HP "MyCD" software is not that great. I haven't tried Adaptec yet, but I'm planning on it. Tried to use the newer 80 min / 700MB CDR media, and all I got were coasters galore! oh well, back to 74 min, no big deal, but that sucks too. Next, we try to burn an audio CD ...

I have had this drive since January, and it has been solid and reliable. I bought an external drive because I have a notebook PC, so it has no expansion slots. Before it I owned a SyQuest SparQ drive, which used 1Gb cardridges, but Syquest went bust and then the drive started becoming unreliable, so I thought i'd get a CD/Rw drive. This drive attracted me particularly because it was one of the few external CD/RWs that had a USB interface that you could actually buy in a computer store. I bought mine in Staples, giving me 14 days to try it, and they gave me a 150% price match, bringing the price down to mail order levels. First impressions of the drive were ...