Enter the recordable CD-ROM drive. With capacities of 750 megabytes, the discs can hold about 520 times as much data as a floppy disk. But file size inflation isn’t the only reason to consider a recordable CD-ROM drive. The newest models are not only inexpensive but have incorporated multiple features, like DVD playback. We looked at a pair of three-in-one drives: the Ricoh MP9060A and the Toshiba SD-R1002, which combine CD Write-Once (CD-R), CD-Rewriteable (CD-RW) and DVD-ROM functionality in the same unit. The Ricoh drive has already dropped from $399 to $299, while Toshiba’s costs $289, though enterprising folks can probably find one for about $250 on the Internet.
The installation process is straightforward for anyone who’s comfortable poking inside a PC. My sisters have been asking me for some new tunes, so as soon as I got the drives installed, I fired up RealJukebox’s music-management software, put together a custom mix of 16 MP3s ranging from Lil’ Kim and Ghostface Killah to Metallica and Limp Bizkit, and then easily mastered it to a disk that could be played in any CD player or PC. So if you’re still messing around with mix tapes, it’s time to cross that bridge to the 21st century.
These drives aren’t just for copying music, though. You can use them to duplicate word documents, digital photos, video clips, back up your hard drive and more. The bundled software lets you use the familiar Windows Explorer interface to copy and delete files from CD-RW discs as if they were floppies or Zip disks. I pulled down a variety of 10-megabyte files from the Internet–mostly clips of upcoming videogames and movies–then copied them to CD-RW discs, and with both drives the process was simple and quick.
As for playing DVDs, the DVD-player software included with the Ricoh drive produced an unusually dark picture; Steven Soderbergh’s sun-drenched L.A. flick, “The Limey,” looked crisp, but the opening scenes of “The Matrix” were almost a wash of black. So if you buy this drive, you should download the free upgrade from Ricoh’s Web site or install another DVD software player that does a better job. Also, the Ricoh box claims that you don’t need an MPEG-2 decoder card to watch DVDs, but I couldn’t get it to work without one. Still, both drives were good enough to make me think about buying one. Anything to keep my aging three- gigabyte hard drive slim and trim.
