Originally posted by: HESDog
This will be a definite YMMV, but I have found several in my area (and already gotten rid of a few)
Yamaha CRW-F1 44x24x44x cd burner, clearanced at OD for $47.04. The drive is quick and quiet, but the DiscT@2 feature takes 12 Minutes . :frown:
IMHO this is one of the highest-quality CD-RW drives that you can get. I've been a big fan of Yamaha CD-RW drives for some time (they were one of the first, btw), and except for a couple of models with issues, they've all been quality. My 6416S lasted 3+ years. Ironically, it still burns fine, but has strange issues reading discs, I don't know what that's about. It got replaced with a Sony/Lite-On 48x (flashed to 52x), which is also decent, but depending on the media, willingly burns completely-unreadable coasters without telling you. My Yamaha *never* gave me any sort of media issues like that. (I attribute it to the Lite-On "cheating" and using media-type tables with burn parameters, and screwing up when two totally different-rated media from the same mfg uses the same mfg ATIP ID code.) The Yamaha 6416S was old enough that it didn't use a media table, and even with newer 32x media, it burns fine. The Lite-On won't burn my Hitachi-Maxell/Jpn 8x CD-Rs worth beans though.
Yeah, the T@2 feature is basically kind of fluff, and not all that useful unless you use Metal Azo CD-Rs, which have a high contrast ratio in the visible frequency range as well as IR, but even discounting that feature, this burner model is really good, IMHO way, way better than a Lite-On of comparable price. (Yamaha got out of the market, because rather than risk their reputation on CD-RW drives made from low-budget components in order to make a profit, like all current drive makers, they just got out instead.)
Btw, the "44x" rating, just so people won't be disappointed, was calculated using 80min-length CD-R media, and is actually more comparable, benchmark-wise, to a "40x" using 74-min media. (I never burn faster than 24x or 32x anyways, for quality reasons.)