Installation of the CRW2100EZ is no harder than the
installation of any CD ROM. The manual and quick install sheet came with very
complete instructions. All I did was remove my Plextor 16/10/40A and replaced it
with the Yamaha 16/10/40. You can install the Yamaha as a stand alone CD Writer
or with your existing CD ROM drive. Since most people like to make backups of
their CDs, the second option is the most common.
With drive hooked up and ready to go, I inserted a 700
CD-R and proceed to do my standard 16X burn test. Three minutes into the burn I
ran into the hated buffer underrun and created a coaster. So much for
Waste-Proof Write Strategy.
Yamaha
claims the CRW2100EZ is able to record at 16X. This is only partly true. The
drive starts recording CDs at 12X and doesn't kick into 16X mode till about 15
minute into the disk. After that, it's 16X all the way to the end. Yamaha also
says the CRW2100EZ can do rewrites at 10X but, again, this too is misleading.
The drive burns CD-RWs at 4X to 8X until it hits the outer edges of the
disk, then it switches to 10X.
This is because of the drive's semi-CAV design, which is
a combo of Constant Angular Velocity (CAV) and Constant Linear Velocity (CLV).
Because CAV spins the disk at a constant speed, more data is written to the edge
than the center. Once the drive writes up to a certain point on the disk it
switches over to CLV to maintain its maximum burn speed.
This semi-CAV design is part of Yamaha's
Waste-Proof Write Strategy. By
using a huge 8 Meg buffer and modulating the write speed it's suppose to do away
with buffer underruns. However it doesn't work very well. Nowhere near as good
as Plextor's Burn Proof. The drive is also quite sensitive to vibration. A whack
on the side of the case created a bad CD. Of course you shouldn't be whacking
your case or running other programs when you're burning CDs.
The Yamaha
drive works well when you don't have any programs running in the background and
when you're not whacking your case (did I just say that?). Speed wise I was able
to burn a full 700 Meg CD in a little over 5 minutes. That's just a bit slower
than the Plextor 16/10/40A.
While the
Yamaha may be behind the Plextor in performance and coaster free burning, it
does offer a more complete software bundle and sells for a lower price. Those
saving graces aren't enough to save me from the frustration of making those bad
CDs however.
The
Goods
-
Great
software bundle
-
Full
feature
-
Easy
to install
The
Bads
Rating: 6/10
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