Price Guides, July 2005: Storage
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Manveer Wasson on July 10, 2005 7:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Optical Storage
NEC makes things so easy for people like me. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the best DVD burner these days; NEC's 3540A [RTPE: ND-3540A] is not only the cheapest drive available, but it's also one of the most feature packed and fastest. Prices on the similar performing Pioneer DVR-109 [RTPE: DVR-109] are also adjusting, but the ND-3540 is still the leader. The 8X DVD+DL burn speeds alone should be worth the upgrade since good Verbatim media will generally burn faster than what it's rated at anyway. Check out how the NEC 3520A and the NEC 3540A have priced against each other over the last few months:
NEC 16X ND-3540A
NEC 16X ND-3520A
However, if you really want to burn DVD-RAM then you only have one viable option; the LG GSA-4163B [RTPE: LG GSA-4163B]. There is a $10 premium on the LG drive right now, but we expect to see NEC's ND-4550A drive in the near future which will have all the features of the ND-3540A but will also support 16X DVD-RAM write speeds and Lightscribe. NEC's next generation dual format burner is also slated to support LightScribe and should debut at the same time as the ND-4550A. We will keep you posted!
We have an upcoming 16X DVDR roundup this week, and you may be surprised to see NEC has some competition from BenQ. Stay tuned next week for more recommendations and hot deals!
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Phiro - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
It's all about the Pentiums!coomar - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
its all about the cost of the media, blue-ray will take a while to drop, at least 2 years probablyKristopherKubicki - Sunday, July 10, 2005 - link
yacoub: That should have read 200GB mark instead of $200 mark. Ooops!xsilver: The original roadmaps I saw put bluyray-r and hddvdr around Q1'06. Im guessing that they will probably cost a few hundred bucks each though, so even if the drives (and more importantly media) show up, development on reducing the cost of existing optical storage drives will continue. I would expect several more iterations of the ND-3xxx/4xxx line even when next gen burners become available.
Kristopher
xsilver - Sunday, July 10, 2005 - link
"NEC's next generation dual format burner is also slated to support LightScribe and should debut at the same time as the ND-4550A. "Does anybody know whether this will be one of the last dvd drives out before the whole blu ray thing takes over?
yacoub - Sunday, July 10, 2005 - link
"SATA drives start to break into those magic low cost per GB ratios around the $200 mark."Zuh?? This line comes after a large chart showing a list of SATA drives priced around $80. 0__o
ProviaFan - Sunday, July 10, 2005 - link
SAS looks interesting, I'll have to do some more reading on that. :)Hacp - Sunday, July 10, 2005 - link
2nd post!ryanv12 - Sunday, July 10, 2005 - link
looks like the 400GB PATA storage section got a couple of 40 giggers stuck in there :)