Better Superdrives in Macs and Powerbooks
According to the Inquirer Apple will be releasing revamped faster Superdrives (4x DVD-R and 12x CD-R) in the next two months along with a Superdrive Powerbook. According to the article the drives will also be much less expensive.
This should be really cool and no doubt will be a shot in the arm for Apples Hardware. I am sure there is work now on a upgrade for older tibooks right now. Anyways, thats the news and I am outta here.
This should be really cool and no doubt will be a shot in the arm for Apples Hardware. I am sure there is work now on a upgrade for older tibooks right now. Anyways, thats the news and I am outta here.
Comments
Also, don't Apple's CD drives still read at 24X? I've heard CD-ROMs are over twice that speed. I heard Apple uses 24X to keep the price down. Well, considering their prices... ( <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> ) they might as well have modern CD-ROM speeds as well as SuperDrive speeds. If the only updates the PowerMacs recieve are SuperDrive upgrades to where they should be already, they'll see a really really bad next quarter.
Where have you seen a 24x 'Superdrive'? Did you mean Combodrive? I think 12x is great for an optical drive that can burn DVDs, too.
I heard that DVD+RW drives are faster but they're seldom compatible to standard DVD Players and you have to pay a lot more per medium (at least over here in Germany...)
viele grüße
Seb
If you can leave discs open (for data, or even additional video sessions) then 4X DVD-R isn't that bad. 1X DVD is about 11Mbps or roughly equivalent to 9x CDR. So you're getting the same 'speed' out of a 4X DVD burn as you would out of a 36X CD burn. That's actually quite fast for a mainstream consumer optical technology. It's just that the disc is so big.
In 18 months when we start seeing the first 8X DVD burners, we'll be archiving data at almost 90Mbps (or the equivalent of a 72X CD-R burn.)
I haven't ever made a DVD-R, but it seems to me that some of this capacity would be wasted on DVD-R because discs are still expensive and you'll not want to waste them unless you're going to fill it completely. I wonder what the multi-session performance/reliability of these drives is like??? Is it practical? Can you do it? Do other DVD drives understand it? It might be more crucial for DVD-rw to provide parity in their 'RW' performance, so that people can take advantage of upcoming speeds for DATA back-up without having to go through piles of expensive discs. Also, cheaper 8cm media, would mean less waste.
Of course this is all moot if DVD-r media makes a rapid price drop in the way CD-r has done.
<hr></blockquote>
I was mistaken. As far as 'Superdrives' go, 8x looks to be the fastest now. It was a different type of DVD writer that claimed faster CD burns. <img src="graemlins/embarrassed.gif" border="0" alt="[Embarrassed]" />
<strong>Also, don't Apple's CD drives still read at 24X? I've heard CD-ROMs are over twice that speed. I heard Apple uses 24X to keep the price down.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'd pay extra to have a slow CD-ROM. Those 50x sound like a 747 is landing in your backyard and take half an hour to get up to speed. And of course, they still only reach 50x at the very edge of the disc. It's more like 16x at the center. All in all, the average over a whole disc isn't that great either.
BTW, the same goes for CD-R's. How much time do you save when you burn at more than 8x? Especially when you can burn in the background it doesn't really matter. Of course, those 40x burners have an immense error-rate. I wouldn't trust my backups to be safe.
[ 07-31-2002: Message edited by: wfzelle ]</p>
not a huge deal, but if you're making 20 of them it adds up.
however, i have found through personal experience that many cd's burned that quickly are no longer readable by lower-end audio cd players. computers read them just fine.
just a thought on why there might be a speed limitation on them.
Pioneer expects to launch a recordable DVD drive for notebook PCs in the fourth quarter, according to c|net. The drive will read and re-write DVD discs at 2X speed, record CDs at 16X speed and rewrite CDs at 10X speed.
______________
What type of CD's can you burn at that speed? We just purchased an internal 40x burner for a PC but we have been unable to burn disc's at anything faster than 12x without a buffer underun.This holds true for copying, or burning from a disc image. The drive we are using has the largest (8mg) buffer we could find and that still doesn't help. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
Even worse, most of these drives have terrible POH (life expectancy.)
My 24x burner takes about 6 minutes to burn a CD from cache buffering to closing the CD. My DVR-104 takes probably 10 minutes.
My feeling is...if you have the capability and the interest why not use it.
By the way: I want to buy and PowerBook for college, but I don't want to jump in with a few thousand bucks when something new with superior specs will be coming out for the same price. What is the current consensus view on when the update will occur. (I haven't had time to scour the boards)
Thanks,
Peter
Make no mistake, I would be perfectly happy with this iMac. I'm not one of those people who goes crazy if they don't have the newest hardware.
Peter
<strong>Thanks Matsu, but the problem is that this iMac isn't truly mine. It belongs to my parents. My thinking is that I could convince them to loan it to me for a couple of months until they update the powerbook.
Make no mistake, I would be perfectly happy with this iMac. I'm not one of those people who goes crazy if they don't have the newest hardware.
Peter</strong><hr></blockquote>
Its funny that we are in the exact same situation... im going to be oaning my brother's new imac until the PBs are updated.... oh and i will be using the uperdrive to burn copies of my class's spring break trip <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />