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In the Forums... |
Posted: July 29, 2000 Written by: Tuan "Solace" Nguyen The Monitor [ Sony GDM-W900 24" Wide Screen: $ 2,235.00 ] (cont.) Other cool features include ultra-high refresh rates. Just look at that. 85Hz at 1920 x 1080. That’s incredible. And the most distinguishable feature on this monitor that sets it apart from others is its wide screen dimension. Now you’ll be able to play Q3 in wide screen format and watch all your DVD titles at full screen without have to look at a disproportional stretched image. All your images will be displayed at a variable 0.27mm to 0.25mm pitch, providing sharp text as well as clean images. This monitor is the king of CRT displays. Alternative Solutions: Flat panel LCD / Plasma You can go for LCD displays if you choose, but like I said, they don’t boast images like the W900 does. As for plasma displays that hang on your wall, you can definitely try one of those. Let’s move on to removable storage. The Burner [ Plextor PlexWriter 12x4x32 Ultra Wide: $ 299.00 ]  There’s only one name that comes to my mind when choosing a CD writer, Plextor. When that name is mentioned, you automatically know that we’re talking about high quality, rugged and high performance drives that simply thrash the competition. The name just says it all. Bringing in a write speed of 12X, this drive will get your CDs burnt in no time at all. You’ll also be burning all your RW discs at 4X. And you won’t have to worry about buffer underruns because this drive uses an Ultra Wide SCSI interface for a 40MB/sec throughput and smooth multitasking. Having a 4MB cache buffer helps too. Although 4MB is nice, it would have been better if Plextor gave it 6MB because its 8x2x20 burner already had 4MB. I would expect more buffer for increasingly faster burn speeds. The picture above illustrates the external version. Plextor also makes an internal version. One of the features that really distinguish Plextor’s drive is its ability to recognize media type. It will tell you exactly who manufactured the type of CD-R disc you have inserted, and depending on the dye of the disc, it’ll automatically adjust laser burn length and power for optimum burn. I’ve heard that people have problems burning audio CD’s at high speeds and so most people stick to 2X or even 1X for audio needs. However, a 12X audio CD sounds perfect without and pops and glitches in it and plays back perfectly on even old CD audio players. This is likely due to the dynamic laser adjustment technique that Plextor has integrated into the drive. The drive also comes with an abundant software package letting you tweak your drive. A nice touch is a driver enabling you to see audio CD’s as a .wav file content disc. Letting you copy over a track on the fly without use of special extraction programs. The drive is also very fast at DAE (Digital Audio Extraction), ripping a CD at a rated speed of 22.3X. Look for our review of this drive to be posted soon. Alternative solutions: There are no real alternatives. Plextor is the best. |
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