Cd-r/w

We have an "old" computer...vintage 1998, HP Pavilion 6333, AMD-K6-2/300 processor, 64mb SDRAM, 6gb Hard Drive, 32 CD-Rom, v.90 K56 modem, HP 380 Printer/Scanner/Copier. We are semi-ready to think about a CD-R/W drive, and want advice as to what to buy. My husband is mainly interested in music use, and I am wanting to store digital photos, for the most part. We know very little about MP-3 players/software/CD-R/W drives and their coordination with our computer. Any advice as to what types are best/worst, what software is best/worst, or whether we should be upgrading our computer first, would be greatly appreciated. Please speak in plain English...although "experienced" with our computer, we still find computer lingo going right over our heads! THANKS SO MUCH FOR ANY HELP!!!
Barb

 

I have had good luck with Acer brand burners. I prefer Adaptec (now, Roxio) software. However, about any major-brand burner will probably do a good job. ( www.pricewatch.com ) With that slow a processor, you can burn CDs successfully; however, don't expect to burn them at top speed.

Other than that, I would say you are good to go.

 

Since my husbands computer is slower than mine, I will speak mostly of his. His is a 400 Megahertz CPU, with 128MB RAM.

We both use a LITE-ON LTR-16102B CD\RW burner, made by Digital Pacific. It comes with standard NTI software, but the NTI software will not do good burns from the hard drive "if" you have edited a song by adding silence & etc., in an Audio Editing program before burning the song to a CD. Otherwise it does fine. Since hubby & I do some audio editing on my personal CD's that I record of myself, we need a better software. So Nero 5.5, made by Ahead, is our choice of burning software after having tried several different ones.

No problems with either computer burning at the maximum speed of the burner, which is 16X, but slower computers may have to be set to burn at 12X, or 10X, or 8X, depending on how slow they are.

One thing that could be suggested is that when you go to burn, turn off all programs that you possibly can that are running in the background, with Ctrl+Alt+Del. Even disable your Anti-Virus with it's own disable feature & exit your Firewalls. Just remember to turn the Anti-Virus & Firewalls back on when you're done burning. Those programs are taking up precious CPU performance & RAM. Turning them off can possibly increase speed to your burner from your hard drive & will of course help to prevent errors in your burn session.

You might try experimenting with burn speeds, starting with a lower one like 8X. If that goes well, go up to 10X. If that went good, go on up to 12X & so on until you find out the highest speed you can burn at on your particular computer & burner that works good from the hard drive. Copying audio from another CD Rom is another story.

As for Brands of media, I have had very good luck with Memorex Music CD\R's & Memorex regular CD\R's (for data). Most burning software seems to like them. They are very good quality media.

Didn't mean to get carried away folks, but I guess I did.

Deloris

 

I would upgrade your computer. I would suggest biting the bullet and putting $1000 down on a new box. If your husband is into music, a new machine with a Sound Blaster Live card and some nice speakers would make his day. Plus you would get a new monitor and burner included. IF a new computer isn't in the budget, add at least 64 MB of RAM. I use a TDK burner with NERO software. I am very happy with that combo.


Hex92