Is it worth the 10x price?
Written: Jul 10 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Quick audio extraction, helpful website
Cons: Price, write performance questionable
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| jsz's Full Review: HP CD-Writer Plus 9300i Series |
I, too, had to have this model after reading a review in PC World. I didn't consider any other model for long, especially considering it was a 4-day weekend and Costco had them in stock for $30 under list price. I knew I could save another $30 or so if I mail-ordered the unit, but I wanted to spend the 4-day holiday recording music CDs, and mail-order wouldn't give me instant gratification nor no-questions-asked returns like Costco.
I've installed hard disks and CD-ROMs before, so installation wasn't that scary. However, I was in quite a quandary because I already had 3 IDE devices installed (hard disk, ATAPI DVD, ATAPI ZIP), and I couldn't find a good source of information on which channels to install the devices. I knew the hard disk should be on the Primary IDE controller, but I got three different recommendations from different sources on how to arrange the devices:
**Dell says not to put the DVD Player on the same channel as the CD-R because this could "cause problems." No elaboration on what those problems were. They recommended putting the CD-R on the same channel as the hard disk.
**HP says to put the ZIP device on the same channel as the hard disk since they are "like devices." They don't recommend having a CD-R on the same channel as the ZIP.
**Iomega says to put the ZIP device on the Secondary IDE controller.
I ended up unplugging the ZIP and plugging the CD-R as the slave to the DVD until I got up the nerve to deal with the situation or until I needed the ZIP drive, whichever came first.
I didn't read the instructions (of course) and created several coasters before reading the Help. I found I had problems with "Enhanced CDs" that tried to launch programs instead of play music, and copying from the DVD to the CD-R was annoying because of all the disk-swapping required to build the play list and then record each song. I read the Help and discovered it's best to record each track to your hard disk as a WAV file, and then record the disk using the "Disk-at-once" option. This turned out to be an easy solution and fortunately I have the disk space to handle this.
My biggest disappointment about this drive is that I can record audio CDs at 4x and slower only. I haven't been able to track down the problem. It could be the media (from Costco, not HP), my hard disk (which I defragged overnight and didn't seem to help), or just the fact that audio requires slower speeds. (The WAV files on the hard disk sound fine.) Because of the speed issue, I don't feel like I got my money's worth, like maybe if I hadn't been in such a darn hurry, I could've bought a slower, cheaper model and gotten the same results.
For the next few days I was torn about returning the thing and buying either an external USB unit (very slow, and about the same price), or going SCSI and buying a SCSI controller. But I couldn't stand having the cover on the floor with the computer's privates open for the world to see, so I finally got all my devices rearranged and plugged in. I decided to follow HP's advice and I made the ZIP as a slave to the hard disk and haven't noticed any performance issues. Once I got the cover back on, the idea of pulling the drive back out didn't sound like such a good idea, so I've decided to keep it.
I may try different media for audio CDs, and I still haven't copied data files so I'm not sure if I can achieve a full 10x write speed.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jsz
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 1 member
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