I bought it for the review here and elsewhere - and also for Plextools, which only works on Plextor drives.

You see, they tested the two most common audio protection shemes with various applications, and only Plextools was 100% successful. I read here:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/document.php3?Doc=74&Page=11
That only Plextools was able to both burn copies and successfully rip tracks off the anti-pirate CD's they tested. They tested two protection shemes: "Cactus Shield 200" using Natalie Imbruglia's "White Lilies", and Sony's "Key2Audio using Nsynch's "Celebrity". Only Plextools had a 100% success rate, against a few other software packages that failed.

Even better, the copied CD had the audio protection scheme completely stripped away by Plextools. It created a normal audio CD from the protected CD !!!

That fact - and the awesome review that CDFreaks gave the Plextor sold me on it. The overall review is at:

http://www.cdfreaks.com/document.php3?Doc=74

Sony's Key2Audio is very insidious - the label openly states that "CD is not playable on PC's!!! " Sheesh that sucks.

I read that Plextools does not come with the U.S. version of the Plextor CDRW's. Anyway, after searching for a few hours (it was tough) I found a recent working version of Plextools online before I ordered the Plextor. Then to my surprise - the unit came with a Plextools CD.

That review is accurate to a point. They didn't test whether the drive can rip CDS-100 or Doc.loc protected audio CDs.

It surprises me that Plextor America would include PlexTools. Here is the Plextor America website of the box contents of its drives: http://www.plextor.com/english/produ...oxcontent.html

Unfortunately, GF didn't have such discs. And Cactus 100 is hard to get anyway, as well as Doc.lok.

For the LiteOn 52x review, I had bought all these protected audio crap discs, and concerning Cactus 100 => it was not even possible to find any of them in local stores! The doc.lok - disc, well, it was the one and only to find...is if Helium Vola were the only disc on earth using Doc.lok 1/2

This is the point where forum members are welcome to do these tests and post there experience regarding these protections

Yep alexnoe has said it all. And besides that keep in mind that I did not do that PlexWriter PX-W4012TA review! The review was posted on 19 April 2002 (hmm on my birthday!) so it can be outdated. If you want to check out a review of the PlexWriter PX-W4012TU drive you can do so here. I did do that one and tested K2A 2 and 3. If you want me to, I can do some more tests with the drive and some newer protections such as CDS200 and Doc.loc (CDS100 is almost impossible to find here)..