The Best External CD Burner we dont have one yet

[Quadfreek 0]

so do any of you know of a good external cd burner. if it matters I have a dell. I would love to have a good cd burner but for a reasonable price. I would appriciated if you had any suggestions as to what I should get.Thank you for your time,David

[WeaponX 0]

Plextor and Lite-On are probably good choices to choose from. I had a Lite-On internal cd burner before and it worked almost flawlessly. Barely had any coasters.

Does it have to be external? I recommend buying a USB enclosure drive and getting an internal cd burner instead. The enclosure drive is useful for many reasons. If you get the one that can enclose both hard drives and 5.25" drives, then you can even use an internal hard drive as if it was an external one.

While I'm recommending the usb enclosure drive, I might as well suggest getting a DVD burner. Why don't you just get a DVD burner though? They have CD burning capabilities also and with the prices dropping like crazy these days, you can pick a very good one for under $100 (usually after rebates for some).

Anyway, brands I recommend (internal or external) are Plextor and Lite-On. You might also be interested in BenQ and Sony even. I heard some bad reviews for Sony, so if you can, steer clear from that one. Take a look at CDRInfo for reviews on CD and DVD burners. They have reviews for both internal and external drives.

[Quadfreek 0]

Yes it does have to be external. but thank you for your replies, and I think I will mention that to my mom to get a DVD burner instead of a CD burner. Well I will get back to you on what I end up getting.Thanks,David

[Brian1405241474 0]

If money is a consideration, like your mom expecting you to pay for it, go for the USB external burner.With more and more drives and burners being firewire based, as it is much faster, the USB ones are coming down in price.I suggest you check a few of the sites online to see how much prices are going and what brand names are out there.Depending on where you live, you can find a bargin.I'd go with the best dvd-cd burner that you can afford.Happy hunting!

[Grafitti 0]

i got myself a lite-on 8x dvd rw for $40 and an external case for $20. not bad, and no coasters either. it's only USB 2.0 though, and if i had to buy one again, for the extra $5 i woulf get a firewire enclosure, as the limited usb data transfer rate only allows a maximum dvd burning speed of 5.5x.---fine for most uses, but now with dvds being a minimum of 8x you might as well take advantage of the extra speed. one thing to look for is an older non-DL writing model, as it'll be half the price, and you'll never use DL dvd writables anyways at the price they are now.