Plextor Debuts 3 New Optical Drives

Long associated with high quality optical drives, Plextor has just announced 3 new drives, ranging in price from $55 to $100. Some of the older computer users might remember that older Plextor models were always made by Sanyo, and tweaked with custom firmware, to give the units such exemplary performance and special features, most notably GigaRec, a technology which allowed up to a gigabyte of information to be stored on standard CD-R discs.

These days, Sanyo (actually a subsidiary named Torisan) no longer manufactures optical drives, so the supplier of these drives must be one of the few suppliers of optical drives left. The PX-880SA, pictured below, looks to be one of the Sony-NEC-Optiarc drives, while the PX-870A seems to be of Samsung origin.

from Tech Connect

Plextor is keeping the faith in the old DVD format and has thus added three more DVD burners to its line-up - the PX-880SA and PX-870A internal drives and PX-880U external drive. All three products have support for the LightScribe technology, Lossless Linking and Zero Link functions to prevent buffer underrun errors, a 2MB buffer and a SATA (PX-880SA), PATA (PX-870A), or USB 2.0 (PX-880U) interface.

Priced at $54.99 and $99.99, the PX-880SA and PX-880U, respectively, provide maximum write speeds of 24x for DVD-R/+R, 12x for DVD-R/+R DL and DVD-RAM, 8x for DVD+RW, 6x for DVD-RW, 48x for CD-R, and 32x for CD-RW. As for the PX-870A, which goes for $54.99, it offers the same speeds with one exception - it can only top 22x for DVD-R/+R.

PX-880SA

PX-880U

PX-870A

This is a return to a pattern of releasing drives with the highest speeds available concurrent with other manufacturers, so it might signal growing fortunes again for the company. These drives, while being more expensive than others (mostly because they tend to not be highly discounted) have a loyal following, and I have never heard a single bad word from a Plextor owner. While the software package is not as large as it has been in the past, Plextor drives still have software that allows their owners to custom tailor the burning to the media in a way not possible with other writers. You simply don’t ear the words coaster and Plextor together, ever.

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