Photograph by: Rick RiznerSamsung SW-224The SW-224's $95 price will attract bargain hunters. And its read performance is impressive, with an application-install time of 3 minutes, 1 second--the fastest we've seen. The next-fastest drive's read performance was only one second slower, but that one, Buslink's 40X/12X/48X drive, costs $55 more.Its digital audio extraction time of 4 minutes, 39 seconds on our test CD-ROM was by far the slowest. (The next slowest drive completed the extraction in 1 minute, 53 seconds.) We tried the extraction again with different software and it yielded the same results. Tests completed with a live CD (one without two-second gaps in between songs) generated extraction times that were the same as those for our test disc, but when we used two non-live CDs (with two-second gaps), those tests produced faster times. Samsung representatives believe that non-standard recordings or live CDs can cause slow extraction times.Samsung offers toll-free technical support for 10 hours a day, but only on weekdays.If you're on a budget, this drive is an inexpensive option, although faster drives are available for about the same price.9524X/10X/40X, IDE, internal, 2MB buffer, buffer underrun technology, Roxio Easy CD Creator 5.1 and DirectCD 5.1, one-year warranty, 10-hour weekday toll-free support.www.samsungusa.com800/726-7864
