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.