Looking To Buy Cd Burner

[sparkymick]

going to buy cd reader/burner. looking on amazon and do not recognise many of the brand names. does anyone have any advice on models/manufacturers. also i assume that usb3.0 is the better option. any ideas.
thank you

[SlackAlice]

Suggest you revise your search slightly to a DVD reader/burner. Why? More capacity in storage on a DVD but you can still burn to CD as well.

Also, do you want it as an external drive or built in?
USB 3 is the latest standard.
If external/portable is what you want I'd go for the Asus Zendrive.

[TheChair]

LiteOn is a well-established brand. As optical drives are inherently slow, paying extra for USB 3 is a bit pointless.
Amazon.co.uk User Recommendation

[Buenchico]

USB 3.0 is, indeed, the better option (providing faster data transfer) as long as your laptop/PC has USB 3.0 ports. (Older devices might only have USB 2.0 ports). A USB 3.0 CD/DVD drive will still work with USB 2.0 ports though but only at the slower speed.

Like SA above, I'd also recommend buying a drive that can write DVDs as well as CDs. That means that you should see 'DVD+/-RW' (and NOT just 'DVD-ROM') in the description. This might be my choice at the moment:
Amazon.co.uk User Recommendation

[alavahalf]

Go on ebay and you will find a glut of them from tech disposal people. Millions of them are taken from ex corporate machines and most of them will be unused.
.. search for ..
DVD CD burner internal.

[bhg481]

I can't see any mention of Dual-layer DVD use in Buenchico's recommendation, although most modern writers cope with it. It's worth checking the one you are looking to buy can take dual-layers.
Alavahalf is recommending internal writers; fine for desktop machines but only useful as replacements for laptops as the case needs to cope with it.