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Fastest Mac DVD drive for less |
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Written by Chris Tangora
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Thursday, 22 May 2008 |
 Other World Computer, macsales.com, now has the fastest DVD burners for the Mac. If you have a PowerPC tower or desktop (excluding the G5 iMac and MacMini) you can get extremely fast burn speeds for dirt cheap. For $32 you can get a 20x DVD write speeds and 10x DVD-DL speed. For an additional $3 you can upgrade to a lightscribe DVD burner with even faster DVD-DL & CD speeds, and you can burn DVD-RAM up to 12x. These aren't knock off brands either, OWC has always carried what we consider quality Mac products and this is no exception. The $32 DVD burner is a Pioneer and the $35 burner is Samsung .
While these are great deals you do have to look at the background to this. These are really good speeds for DVD burners, no doubt. But the only problem I can see is the eventual fading out of DVD's. Granted that it won't happen for a few more years, but once we start seeing the BluRay disc burners coming into the Mac the rest of the industry will follow. The DVD supply will be around for a long time. It's convenient and it isn't proprietary (like BluRay).
If you don't have a PPC tower OWC still has some DVD drives that will work for your upgrades. They also offer BluRay readers as well, but they start out at $160 and go up quickly to the upper $600's. If you have a PPC tower or desktop that you plan on keeping for the next 2 to 4 years these DVD burners are worth a look. If you get one and you like it, make sure you send them your old one back for a cash refund on it (it's not much, but every dollar helps).
Comparison of high definition optical formats
OWC's rebates for old opticals
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