CD Writers

With CD Writers becoming increasingly popular as backup

devices, we decided to split this category into Tape Backup and CD Writers. We’ve

been following this market closely, and have also carried reviews of product

ranges offered by many players.

So, with a lot of brands here, quality is the prime factor

for buying a CD Writer. For current usage in corporate establishments, HP and

Sony are the favorites. Sony showed the highest numbers in current usage in

households. In the most-preferred brand, Sony has come out on top, and is thus

the winner this year. Reasons quoted for this have been quality and reliability.

HP isn’t very far behind in the runner up position. It looks like there will

be more competition between the two in future.

Other players in this segment include Philips, Creative, LG,

and Samsung. Of these, only Samsung and Philips managed to gather enough votes

to reach the User’s Choice Club this year.

The factor that’s constantly improving with technology in

CD Writers is speed. So, every other day we have a drive that’s faster than

the ones before. Although this parameter doesn’t make a noticeable difference

in read speeds for CD-ROM drives, it does matter for Writers and ReWriters.

Another noticeable statistic in our survey was the presence

of "other" brands in the corporate segment. These are names like

Plextor CD-Writers. Where do these figure? We find that such drives are

preferred by people like CD developers, CD replicators, etc. These are

considered high-end drives and have their own niche market.

Lately, we’ve also seen new USB CD Writers come up. These

haven’t gained popularity in the market yet, but may pick up in future.

Targeted segments for these includes small offices with lots of data backup

requirements. HP is one of the vendors to have introduced such a drive recently.

This is a hot segment, with lots of players competing for market share. Let’s

see whether Sony can retain its mindshare next year.