Any idea if this burner is any good? On the ebuyer site and seems to be the 1st 12x i've seen on sale.

And if it is a rebranded LiteOn/NEC/Sony/etc?

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=62295

Hmm, not sure about this one... Read HERE.

BTW, there is also a thread at CDRLabs. Check it out.

Philips chipset ahhhh...

From the spiel maybe i'll save my money and wait for someone with a bit more reputable reputation. Sounds like they need to work on their customer support/firmware updates.

Cheers for the info pinto2.

Burning at 12x ? forget it !! Look that !!

http://www.artecusa.com/products-16X8dvd%2Brw.html

Most DVD burner makers are concentrating on 16x drives intead of doing it one time more with 12x speed since it will cost them more time and money. 16x DVD burners were going to be released around this summer regardless of 12x coming or not.

16x DVD+R burning speed itself does not impress me much since the average writing time for 4.7GB DVD disks will be about five minutes per disc, just less than 50% shortened instead of 100%. 8x DVD+RW, however, sounds great to me. That's about three times as fast as 5x DVD-RAM which only LG-Hitachi's latest model GSA-4120B can provide on the retail market! Maybe in 2005 or 2006, we'll see drives offering 16x DVD+R, 8x DVD+RW, and 16x DVD-RAM priced at US$30.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduc...ion=27-120-157

Listed for less than $100 USD.

And the model number and specs seem to suggest that it's indeed 12x...

I'm almost tempted to get one, simply because this is the cheapest (and thus most accessible) 12x burner available!

At the same time, after my past experiences with Artec, I'm thinking that I should be staying away from it... what do you think? Should I get one to play with?

Go on you know you want to

Might give the rest of us poor saps an idea of whether this is the dogs bollocks or just bollocks.

And if it is rubbish you could put it on top a small stack of sticks and burn it with its lightsaber..... hang on that's Jedi isn't it. Always get those two confused.

I always say go with your gut. Uhm, if you didn't trust Artec before do you really want to give them your hard earned dollars again when you can get a nice reliable 8x burner (NEC-2500A) for a cheap price now and wait until the newer drives have time to mature a little bit later?

I just installed the Artec 12X DVD +/- R and the latest Nero will not let it burn DVD +R faster than 1x. I tried 4x and 8x DVD +R media. Others are reporting the same. I called Artec Tech support and they said a "firmware upgrade" should be out next week.

I am not going to hold my breath!

@Don Q,
Did they ship burning software with the drive?
If so, what?
What media did you try it on?

I tried the Nero burner software that shipped with the drive. I also tried Alcohol, Adaptec and a few others. My Nec burns great I tried Memorex and Verbatim 8X blanks. Only get 1X no matter what I tried.

Requested a refund. Stay away from Artec unless 1X is all you want.

US$87 now.