by UALOneKPlus on Sun Jan 05, 2003 5:37 pm
Thanks for the reply. Actually we purchased 3 mini-CDRW's to try out, as the very 1st one I had was faulty, but due to my ignorance about CD-RW, seemed to work fine. The rest were factory replacements / store exchanges.
This was a review that I wrote a while back about the CD-RW 2 years ago:
I first purchased an Archos miniCDRW last December, during the holiday shopping season. I wanted a USB CDRW to back up files and transfer files from my laptop to my desktop computer.
The Archos miniCDRW was cool looking, and very compact in size, and was offered with USB and PCMCI cables, and advertised as compatible with Windows 95/98, NT, and 2000.
Well, when I tried to install it with my laptop running on NT, it gave my laptop the blue screen of death. I had to get a new laptop and new operating system Windows 2000, to be able to use the CDRW.
The CDRW worked okay on a few CDRW's and CD-Rs, but problems surfaced right away. First of all, you can't open the CDRW lid to insert a new CD or remove one, unless the device is plugged into a computer which is turned on and actively reading the device. This means that if your computer accidentally dies or powers down, you are SOL in terms of trying to get the CD out of the CDRW.
A major problem that occurred was that the CDRW began creating scars, or noticeable "smudges" on the CD-R's and CD-RW's. The increased every time I played or recorded the CD-R or CD-RW in it, and over time, the CD-R or CD-RW would be unreadable in any device.
I called Archos tech support and got no help on this issue. In addition, a friend of mine purchased an Archos miniCDRW, primarily based upon my recommendation. He immediately had bad problems with the oily smudges as well, right out of the box. In fact, none of the CD-R's or CD-RW's he burned were usable. Fortunately he exchanged his miniCDRW, and the second Archos miniCDRW seemed to work without problems. However, his second Archos package included only the Toast burning program for Mac, not the Adaptec Easy CD Creator package, even though the box was labeled as including Adaptec Easy CD Creator program. The dismal quality control for the product was very disappointing.
After 3 months of very little usage of his second Archos miniCDRW, it recently began giving him problems. He kept getting "device errors" while trying to write to CD-R's and CD-RW's. Nothing on his computer had changed, but apparently the Archos miniCDRW decided to begin giving up the ghost.
My friend called Archos and shipped the CDRW back to them for warranty service. Archos sent him a replacement CDRW within a week, which was very impressive.
Unfortunately, the replacement miniCDRW gave his computer system the blue screen of death with the PCMIA interace, and froze his computer with the USB connection. And since it didn't work with his computer, his CDRW was locked in the device for good, without any hope of removing it from the device before a second return to Archos.
