From: David Goldman (David_at_dgoldman.com)
Date: Thu Jan 07 1999 - 21:09:25 EST
At 04:25 PM 1/7/99 -0500, John Kim wrote:
>
>Some CD-RW disks are certified for 2x, others are certified
>for 4x. When I pop in a 2x disk, I don't even get the option
>to try to write to it at 4x. That option is greyed out. So
>somehow, the disk is telling the drive not to try writing to
>it faster than 2x.
Some CD-R media is now certified up to 8x!
>I would much rather pay $100 to go from 30 min to 15 min (a
>net savings of 15 minutes), than pay $100 to go from 8x to 16x
>(from 8 min to 4 min, for a net savings of 4 minutes). I have
>a 20x CD-ROM reader right now, and I frankly don't see the
>point in upgrading it to 32x or 40x or whatever the latest
>speed is, because 20x is already plenty fast enough. The
>biggest difference in wait times is at the low speeds.
Depending on what and how much data you are reading, you might
actually be better off with a "slower" CD drive (like a 4x or 8x).
The faster drives (24x, 32x, 40x) take much longer to "get up to
speed" than the slower drives. So if you are reading a small amount
of data on an infrequent basis, a slower drive is better. On the
other hand, if you're installing software (like Microsoft Office
or Visual Studio), then the faster drive is better.
And finally, it should be obvious that if you're playing audio
CDs, the speed doesn't matter.
-- David Goldman
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