save $ w/R rather than RW?

[ironword]

A dumb newbie question, but I poked around for awhile and didn't see an answer. Here's the deal--I'm not a heavy burner; I don't fileshare; I use CD-Rs for backing up semi-permanent data. My regular backup system involves zip disks (which I've got plenty of), not CDs, so again I'm no big CD-er.

I've been using the burners in my college computer lab for my occasional needs, but as you can imagine, using a burner on a computer somewhere else gets annoying even for a sporadic user like me (it forces me to transport three or four zip disks at the very least). So I'm going to bite the bullet. Problem is, I'm on a student budget, so I'm thinking that maybe I could just settle for a CD-R rather than an RW.

However, it doesn't look like anyone even makes burners anymore that are only R's. But maybe there are still a few CD-R burners in warehouses out there for rock-bottom prices. If that's the case, which models should I be searching for? (I don't know how a big question that is--I realize that it may be unanswerable, but I ask in case it's common knowledge among insiders that there are still lots of one particular model hanging around because of overproduction or something.)

Of course, given the post by Intimidator about the $10 burner from Office Max ("Get them while they are hot!", July 27) maybe there isn't much money to be saved by getting an older burner that only does CD-R...but I'm a stereotypically starving student, and every penny counts. And at the same time I want the best, most rock-solid performance I can get: no underruns at spec speeds, no trouble with long filenames, etc. I'm willing to budget enough dough for the top-quality product, it's just that I don't want to pay for any frills--and given my current needs, RW is a frill.

--Mike

[Bhairav]

Going to be tough. The last non-RW drives I can remember are the Plextor 8/20 SCSI. Then again, if you buy that, you'll probably have to invest in a SCSI controller card, and they are not cheap.

[Intimidator]

As far as I know they do not even make CD-R burners anymore. You are much better off getting a CDRW. Why? As you stated you carry around 4 zip, I assume 100MB disks. When you could be carrying around ONE 760MB CD-R which is 7 zip disks.

If you look at it this way the time and effort that you spend creating a 4 or 5 zip disks compared to ONE CD-R, is amazing! You could burn all your files onto ONE CD-R much quicker than you can when you are dealing with several zip disks. Now any time that you can save while you are in college, all the better.

If you want all that buffer underrun protection then you want some fairly new. This technology was not around at that time as far as I know.

If you watch the sale flyers on Sunday you most likely will find some deals. If you don't want to wait for a sale then I would recommend to order one from newegg.com:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.a ... 14&order=1

This is the Lite-On section, however there are many more to choose from here:

http://www.newegg.com/app/manufactory.a ... g=5&DEPA=1

Something else to keep in mind is when transporting many files not EVERY computer will use a ZIP disk. The CD-R is much more universal because pretty much every computer will have a CD-ROM.

Just make your life easier and you will enjoy college so much more! Trust me I have done this before. I currently teach a local college and use burned CD-R's for my lectures. There seems to be NO zip disks on campus.

Good Luck!

[CDRecorder]

I'd say that it isn't worth it trying to buy an older burner; you can actually probably get a newer one for less money.

If I'm remembering right, OfficeMax has the 52x24x52x KHypermedia CD-RW drive on sale (after rebate) for $10.

[dolphinius_rex]

Older burners will not burn new media very well, they can't compete with the newer burners for writing quality, plus the speeds at which they burn are usually not supported by today's media types. Not to mention the fact that older (assuming used) burners will die quicker then a brand new one

[ironword]

Thanks to all for the advice, and to Intimidator for the links. I'll check them out, though I will probably wait for a sale.

Again, the input is much appreciated--

Mike