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BenQ TB248T External DVD-Combo

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

This is a slim external CD-R/RW and DVD-ROM combo drive. Though this drive's rated specs are slightly lower than other external drives (24X CD-R/RW and 8X DVD read against 52X R/RW and 16X DVD read), it's also half their size too. This also makes it a compact and smart attachment to your notebook. However, if speed is your forte then this certainly is not meant for you. The drive has a 2 MB buffer and comes bundled with InterVideo WinDVD 4.0 and Nero Express. We tested this drive on a P4 3.0 GHz machine with 512 MB RAM and 10 GB hard drive. The media used were Sony 52X CD-R and 24X

CD-RW. 

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We used Nero 6.3.1.25 for the CD writing tests, and have compared it with some internal combo drives (see table) to give you an idea of where it stands. To directly burn 650 MB data from a hard drive to a CD-R media it took 4:51, and to copy from CD to CD it took 5:20. While to burn a 73 mins audio CD it took 5:00 and CD-to-CD (audio) copying took 5:03. Creating an ISO image took 1:20. The speed results were impressive given the rated speed of the drive. They even came close to some 40X CD writers that we've tested before. We used Nero InCD for burst copy of data on CDs. It took 1:33 to format a 530 MB media. The bulk copy time for 530 MB mix data using InCD was around 1:48. We used Nero CD-DVD speed test for the DVD ROM and took a 4.33 GB data DVD. The average transfer time came to 6.06X. The random seek

time was 104 ms and interface burst rate was 18 Mbps.

The Bottom Line: A sleek and stylish drive with impressive performance, apt for notebooks.

Sudarshana Mishra

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