Photograph by: Rick RiznerBuslink RW3240If our rankings were based
on performance alone, this drive would have placed even
higher on our chart this month than number four. It was
within a couple of seconds of being the fastest of the
drives we've tested that can write CD-Rs at up to 32X, and
only the 40X/12X/48X-rated drives from Lite-On and Buslink
beat its overall performance. It took just 3 minutes, 38
seconds to write a 650MB folder to CD-R on the fly (about
the same speed as the other 32X-rated drives we tested).
The drive's packet-writing time of 1 minute, 7 seconds to
write 100MB of files to CD-RW is about the same as the
times of other 12X-rated drives on our chart, and beats the
10X-rated drives by 15 to 30 seconds.Alas, Buslink's technical
support and documentation aren't reasons to buy this drive.
The company answers its tech support lines only during
weekday business hours, and calls are not toll-free. If
you'll need installation guidance or other technical
assistance, look elsewhere. LG Electronics' GCE-8320B, for
example, includes extensive documentation for both drive
and software, and the company offers 13 hours of toll-free
technical support on weekdays and 8 hours of Saturday
support.This drive supports the
Mount
Rainier specification, which was developed
to make writing, deleting, and rewriting data to a CD as
simple as accessing a floppy disk. Future versions of
Windows, Linux, and Macintosh operating systems are
expected to support it.This drive is best for
do-it-yourself types who don't need much in the way of
technical support or documentation.13032X/12X/40X, IDE,
internal, 2MB buffer, buffer underrun technology, Nero
Burning ROM 5.5 and InCD 3.2, one-year warranty, 9.5-hour
weekday support (calls are not toll-free). www.buslink.com877-684-6462
