Sony Optiarc AD-7240S 24x DVD Writer - Lite-On or NEC Design

[Dartman]

With mine I'd say they are about equal most of the time, though both drives can have their moments/preferences. I use a 1655 secondary to my 7240 and have quite a collection of other drives as you know

[callous]

Say,when are you getting the lightscribe version of this...

[SithTracy]

Say,when are you getting the lightscribe version of this...

I've never been interested in LightScribe and when I buy a drive I look for the non-LS version. While sometimes the output looks appealing, the things I put on a disc never justify the extra time to pretty up a label. I'm good with a Sharpie!

[Dartman]

I used label flash before but have never used LS yet. I just buy whatever seems to do the best job burning disks at the time and for a long time it was the BenQ series drives. I have some LS disks that I don't even think I've burned anything to yet as well, maybe I should try one with the new 7240, I think they are Verbatims of some older 16x flavor...

[Dartman]

Well mine got hot during a heat wave last week and now it doesn't burn any good to most disks any more Everything else in here still works fine as far as I know. I updated to 1.02 then I started getting spikes of huge POF errors at the end of burns, after it cooled off over night it had spikes at the beginning and end after it warmed back up a bit. I'll probably order a new one sooner or later but it seems I have Ians luck as at first it burned great. it seems that Sony's warranty policy is to let the seller deal with it and New Egg has a 30 day, after that I guess it's all yours.

[Ian]

Thats too bad. It's a great drive otherwise.

Are there any companies in the US selling retail versions of this drive? I know there are a few in Japan selling it under a different name.

[Dartman]

Not sure, the price is back up to almost 30 bucks plus shipping I'm sure now. I paid 26 shipped when they first came out and we were all talking about what chipset it might use.
I know the Sony labeled version has different firmware, up to like 1.06 or something but I haven't looked around to see who else carries it. Pretty broke right now so not sure if I'll order another one from somebody right away or wait till some of my finances start getting back to normal.
I'm also hoping these things aren't very sensitive to heat or some other issue so other folks don't eventually end up with problems burning after we all said how great this drive is.
I had a BenQ cd burner do something similar back when we all were doing CD's but it's been a rare occurrence for me to have issues after some amount of time, they either don't work right away or continue to work till something breaks years later.

[TheOldGit]

They are supposedly also coming out with a Light scribe version, and MAYBE a IDE version, not positive about the IDE but saw the 72401, I think it was, with light scribe on their product page. No Firmware updates yet but they do have the thing listed and the link for FW goes to all drives they make, just nothing for this guy.
I posted a bunch of my test burns on Freaks and everyone else is jumping in too so lotsa burns posted. My only burn to my last Verbatim old dl disk was not so great but it verified fine in the burner after, others have had much better burns with it.
I'd say with a update or two the drive may reach godlike burns

Hi DM:
Are you (or anyone else) aware if they did make an IDE version of either the AD7240 or preferrably the AD7241S ?

If not, what's the closest thing that Sony do - with IDE - to the above models ?

I've just put up a post asking about Sony IDE drives, and really would like one of the above, but with IDE.

cheers all
TOG

[Dartman]

They don't have any IDE versions of this model and I don't think they plan to make one. Maybe the older 7200 has a IDE version and they are pretty good burners as well, 20x write speed.