Nice and portable in a choice of colours (Liteon eSAU108)

Member Name: davomrmac

Product:	Liteon eSAU108
Date:	12/10/09 (25 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Portable, reliable, fast, quiet

Disadvantages: Bus powered only

This is a very useful device in todays market. A lot of people are buying netbooks, for their portability and of course they do not have an optical drive. It is all fair enough expecting you to download everything, but there comes a time when you just need a CD or DVD reader to install something, or a writer to backup some files.

The eSAU108 is a very attractive device, available in black, pearl white, red or blue. It does not come with a power supply, it is powered through the USB connection. The cable supplied has a Y-connector. So you can connect to two USB ports on your netbook or laptop to give the drive more power if needed. There is an LED light on the drive that glows blue if it has enough power, or red if you need to feed it more power.

It comes with some software. You get Nero 8 Essentials for the PC and Nero 3 Essentials for Linux. This 108 model costs about £45, there is also a 208 model which costs an extra £5 and adds Lightscribe, which allows you to laser label your disks too (you decide if you really need that feature).

Writing is fast and reliable, at up to 8x speed. It is quite quiet too. I completed about 12 disks in my test without any errors.

For such a small package, at such a small price, this is a good buy if you need a portable reader/writer, or something to partner up with that diskless netbook.

Summary: A perfect partner for that diskless netbook