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In the Forums... |
Posted: July 29, 2000 Written by: Tuan "Solace" Nguyen The Reader [ Plextor UltraPlex 40X Ultra Wide: $ 93.00 ]  There are a few main reasons why we chose this drive over other drives such as Kenwood’s TrueX 72. The first reason is the benefits that come from buying a Plextor. You get extreme performance on demand. You get uncompromising speed and extremely low CPU usage, leaving your processors free to handle other more important tasks. This low CPU utilization feature is inherent of SCSI devices. This drive also lets you team it up with a PlexWriter and perform bit-for-bit accuracy duplication using Plextor’s proprietary duplication software. Double team action folks. This is performance at its best. The added benefit of its Ultra Wide SCSI interface lets the drive spit data at a blazing 40MB/sec maximum throughput. SCSI, it’s beautiful. Alternative Solutions: Kenwood TrueX 72 You won’t be able to enjoy bit-for-bit duplication and Ultra Wide SCSI madness but you’ll get seven lasers reading your discs at once giving you maximum throughput. The problems that plagued TrueX drives no longer exist, so you may want to consider a TrueX drive. But I’m aiming for consistency and ultra performance here. Plextor. Unfortunately Plextor has yet to come out with a DVD drive; how disappointing. The DVD [ Pioneer DVD-105S 16x/40x DVD: $ 117.00 ]  Okay, I know that’s a terrible picture but it’ll do. We contemplated whether to go for this 16X IDE drive or a 6X SCSI drive. And it came down to this 16X IDE drive. This is mainly do to the fact that none of our IDE channels have been used yet, so filling it with one DVD reader is no problem at all. And we don’t need to worry about CPU utilization because we’re not likely going to be playing Unreal Tournament while watching our favorite DVD title. I love the slot loading mechanism of the drive. It’s nice and silent and cleans the disc before it fully inserts into the drive. And the speed rating at 16X DVD and 40X CD is unmatched. Pioneer makes the best DVD drives. This drive reads everything; you won’t have any trouble reading your copied and archived discs. Alternative Solutions: Toshiba SD-W1111 DVD-RAM  We would have gone with a DVD-RAM drive but there really is no point. It takes forever to write one DVD-RAM disc, and read speed isn’t all that great either. And besides, you can't read the discs anywhere else except on your system or another system that has a DVD-RAM drive, which is unlikely. The SD-W1111 has a SCSI interface, so that’s a good plus, but other than that, it’s not a very good thing to blow money on. And it’s cheaper to buy movies than to buy and blank and copy them. Now that we have something to read DVD discs, we’ll need a dedicated decoder card. |
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