Posted by Bill's News on 11/19/06 02:35

Anthony Marsh wrote:
> Bill's News wrote:
<snip>

>> Interestingly all discs burn faster than they verify?
>>
>
> Yes, typically burning at 18X and verifying at 4X.
>
<snip>

I mentioned this, in this preparatory note to DELL, only because
I had also mentioned using the NEC 3550 externally. The 3550
does not have any read constraint and often reads at 14 to 16x.
The built in drive burns at something less than 16x but verifies
at 4x to 6x. My gibe is that DELL actually felt it necessary to
use such a drive - which will be replaced with an NEC as soon as
I iron out the rest of the issues. If the options existed, I'd
have ordered the machine with no DVD drive, no OS (I have a
day-one, purchased copy of XPHE and the SP 1 & 2 CD updates from
MS), and a firewire 800 controller. Seems a travesty to have
USB2 as the only external interface in such a relatively fast 2g
PC.

While the price was quite reasonable, I've little doubt - at the
moment - that an Intel CPU would not have given me as many
problems. AMD: not ready for prime time. DELL: well they've
let me down after at least half dozen PC purchases.

BTW, not meant to impugn the impressive performance of this
cheap machine, when it's working!

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