Hewlett-Packard 8100i SureStore
CD-Writer Plus
Last updated: 07/29/03
OPERATION Disk mastering
depends on a constant, uninterrupted stream of data. You may have to
shut down programs, such as dial-up connections, which could interrupt your
CPU, before making copies audio or digital CD's or risk loosing data.
I found a full format of RW CD's took better
than hour (about 75 minutes, sigh!) on a 350 Mhz Pentium II computer. This
is greatly mitigated by Hp's Fast Format software (see above). Once
formatted, I could copy about 530 MBytes from a hard disk drive, which fills
a formatted RW disk, in about 39 minutes. This is quite
respectable--much faster and easier to access than a tape drive, and simpler
than minding a zip drive and inserting five or more 100 MB zip cartridges. Rewritable
CD's are not readable on older CD-ROM drives. Newer CD-ROM drives with MultiRead
support can read them.
For the most reliable CD-R copies, you can
choose to test a CD and write at 1X. That takes well over an
hour. If one cranks-up the speed to 4X it takes about 33 minutes to
test and copy a CD. By skipping the testing, a CD can be directly
copied to a blank CD in about 18 minutes.
When reading CD's, I really don't see an overwhelming
difference between this drive reading at 24X and 36X CD-ROM. The 8100i
spins-up pretty darn fast.
A real nit pick,,, the CD drawer could open
and close with a somewhat smoother sound.
THE 8110i DRIVE. 8100i
and 8110i drives are identical. The 8110i has more software, a superset
of the 8100i software. I have not driven the 8110i drive
SUPPORT. HP provides really excellent
Web support for this product.
BOTTOM LINE: Considering overall
price, performance, quality, support, and functionality, I do not believe
you will find a better CD burner.
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Larry
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