Lite-On 52x24x52 (is it available in Orlando, Florida ?)

by **Gustavo** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 7:18 am

Hi all. Do you know if the Lite-On 52x24x52 internal IDE is available in one of the many stores in Orlando, Florida (Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc.) ? I live in Brazil and I have a friend going to Orlando next week.
Thanks a lot in advance.
Gustavo

by **cfitz** on Fri Jan 03, 2003 11:32 am

You won't find it sold under the LiteOn brand, since LiteOn doesn’t distribute their drives directly to retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City. Instead you need to look for a LiteOn drive repackaged and sold under a different brand name. BusLink and Memorex are two brands that do sell LiteOn drives under their own brand names. Inside the BusLink box you will find a LiteOn drive with straight LiteOn firmware. Inside the Memorex box you will find a LiteOn drive with firmware that says "Memorex" but is otherwise identical to straight LiteOn firmware. You can use FlashFix (available from Dimitri at http://digitri.tk/ ) to flash official LiteOn firmware to the Memorex drive.

To verify that the box contains a LiteOn before you purchase, look for the "SMART-BURN" trademark on the box and a stick-on serial number that resembles this:

As we have noted before on these forums, this advice is accurate to best of our collective knowledge, but, companies have been known to change their suppliers from time to time and begin shipping drives made by other manufacturers, and we aren't privy to those decisions. If you want to be 100% sure of getting a LiteOn, get it online from a reseller who specifically sells LiteOn (e.g. www.newegg.com ). This isn't practical in your case, since you live in Brazil, but it would still be wise to have your friend check the drive in Florida before returning to Brazil.

cfitz

by **MCKComputerWorks** on Sun Jan 05, 2003 3:09 am

I just purchased a BusLink 52x24x52 drive @ MicroCenter (Kansas City) yesterday, and it IS a Lite-On. Got it for $39.99 after rebate. Best Buy does stock the BusLink drives, and hopefully they're Lite-Ons too...

by **imtim83** on Sun Jan 05, 2003 3:55 am

MCKComputerWorks i wish we had a MicroCenter here :(

by **MCKComputerWorks** on Sun Jan 05, 2003 2:33 pm

Hey, ImTim83, this drive can also be ordered online @http://www.microcenter.com. Good luck!

by **imtim83** on Sun Jan 05, 2003 3:13 pm

MCKComputerWorks thanks the thing is i can't like make sure it has burnproof on the box before i get it. I know how some stores say the item isn't always like the picture but i know so far everyone who has bought a Bulink 52x 24x 52x it has been a liteon cd-rw drive. MCKComputerWorks by the way are do you know if you can use liteon firmware with it ?

by **BuddhaTB** on Sun Jan 05, 2003 4:00 pm

Gustavo wrote:Hi all. Do you know if the Lite-On 52x24x52 internal IDE is available in one of the many stores in Orlando, Florida (Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc.) ? I live in Brazil and I have a friend going to Orlando next week.
Thanks a lot in advance.
Gustavo

I would check out the web-sites for Best Buy, CompUSA, and Circuit City for the BUSlink 52x, Memorex 52x, TDK 52x, or Sony 52x as they are all based on the Lite-On 52246S. The most desirable model of those 4 are the BUSlink branded ones because they are OEM Lite-On drives straight out of the box and the only thing not Lite-On about them is the box and the manual. The other 3 drives use firmware from their own brands.

Go to the websites I mentioned earlier and when you select the particular product, you can see which stores in the Orlando area have the product in stock. For the Best Buy, you must ad the item to your cart and select store pick-up in order to show what stores in the area have the product in stock. To make things easier, having the zip code of the Orlando area would be of great help to you. The Orlando area has zip codes ranging from 32801 all the way to 32899. This info will be useful in finding the nearest store too.

Also since you are out of the country, you can't get any of the rebate checks back, unless you have a friend who resides in the United States and can use their address to mail the rebate check to.

www.BestBuy.com
www.CompUSA.com
www.CircuitCity.com

by **Gustavo** on Sun Jan 05, 2003 6:54 pm

Thank you very much for all of you folks who helped me with this subject.
Sincerely
Gustavo
PS: I finally got my new recorder. It´s a Memorex 52maxx 2452AJ model. Could you please tell me the steps to reflash it to a Lite-On 52x24x52 ? Thanks a lot in advance.
Gustavo