Plexwriter W124Tsi |
Internal SCSI drive. Rs 24,950 Speeds: 12x/4x/32x Software for CD-R: B’s Recorder (in Japanese), EasyCD Creator 3.5 with updates Software for CD-RW: B’s Clip (in Japanese), DirectCD with updates Cache: 4 MB Vendor: Zeta Technologies, A/2 Shriji Niketan, 541/D, Dr Ambedkar Road, Matunga (C.Rly) Mumbai 400019. Tel : 22-4102288 Fax : 4102277 E-mail: tejas@zetaindia.com |
This drive has the highest
rated write speed of the lot. This sort of speed is suitable for multimedia
designers or big offices with large data backup requirements. The rewrite
and read speeds are 4x and 32x respectively.
The
software we received with the drive–B’s Clip and B’s Recorder–were
in Japanese. As our linguistic capabilities are not up to the mark, we used
Nero 5.0 Demo for our tests initially. With this, it wrote 648 MB of data
directly to CD in seven minutes flat. So, as a data backup device, this is a
great choice. Unfortunately, Nero 5.0 didn’t work too well in the audio CD
tests. Our existing Easy CD Creator didn’t have the drive signature, and
so was unable to recognize the drive. We asked the vendor for another
software, and got EasyCD Creator with proper updates for this drive. This
software took around 17 minutes for the 648 MB direct data write. It again
cached the data on the hard drive before doing the actual writing.
The drive took only about 11
minutes for creating an image and writing it to a CD. This was the best
performance of the lot. In packet writing tests, it took 36 minutes to
format a CD-RW disk and gave a 532 MB usable capacity. The data transfer
rates were, however, a bit low at 0.453 MB/sec compared to the others in
this category.
As for copying audio CD tracks, the time
taken was about 18 minutes for 15 tracks. Being a high-end drive, it’s
priced at Rs 24, 950, which is a bit high, even though its performance as a
data storage device is excellent.
Like the HP 9310i, it also
comes with Neato and Acid Music. It also has Broderbund’s PrintShop
Multimedia Organizer to manage your photographs and photo albums in style.
At a price of Rs 20,052, this is a bit costly
as far as performance is concerned. However, its portability and ease of
install make it an attractive buy.