DVD Burner

I've been researching DVD RW drives for quite a while now. Waiting for the price to hit the right spot. A number of $130 - $150 range brands have been showing up in the weekend ads (CompUSA, BestBuy, OfficeDepot, etc...) I had been eyeing the I/O Magic for a while. I had found a few positive reviews on the drive across the Internet and Circuit City had them on sale this week for $139.

Upon arriving at the store, I noticed the Sony DRU510A. I've wanted this drive since it was first announced close to a year ago. It was the first dual-format DVD drive. It supports DVD-RW, DVD+RW (they're different!), DVD+R, DVD-R (yep, they're different) as well as CD-R and CD-RW. However, at the time it was announced, it was MSRP at $399. Too much for me at the time. This drive is now down to $279 -- before a $30 mail-in rebate. So I was looking at the name-brand Sony which has had a lot of praise in the press for $250 or the IO Magic for $140. I decided I'd spend a litte more and go with the name-brand Sony.

So far, so good. I got it installed the other night without a problem. Formatting a DVD+RW only takes about 30 seconds -- then I have 4.7GB of storage available. Very nice. Now it's time to work on a backup strategy.