The Plextor Plexwriter 8/4/32A is an excellent product from an award winning company. Plextor is probably best known for their high end Ultra SCSI CD-ROM's and CD-Writers. The Plexwriter does not use the SCSI interface like the faster and more expensive Plextor drives do, it uses the ATAPI, which uses a regular E-IDE connector. Plextor has faster 12/4/32 SCSI drives that offer more speed, but are more expensive. 

When I first saw that Plextor had introduced a faster CDRW, I decided to check it out and see if it was time for me to spend some cash to obtain one of these bad boys. One reason I decided I needed a CDRW drive was that I love the fact that I can just download mp3s and not have to go out and buy the expensive artists' CD. Instead I now can just download the songs I want to hear and burn them onto a CD. Another reason is for storage. I can save up to 700mb on the new CDR's, and 650mb on any CDR. On the 700mb disks you can save 80 minutes worth of audio files that, if converted into the proper format, can be played in any CD player or CD-ROM.

The new PlexWriter 8/4/32A can burn a CD 8 times faster than the original 1x drives that hit the market what seems like not so long ago. This intrigued me, I wanted one of these scorching fast burners. I went to www.plextor.com and read what they had to say about the drive. They claim it burns full audio CDs in less than 10 minutes. Well I tried this with my Jimmy Buffet CD. Well, how does 9 minutes 21 seconds sound? FAST huh? This drive proves to me that Plextor wasn't just blowing smoke about their product. Under 10 minutes for a full CD, that is nice, since this drive does not have the new "Burn-Proof" technology you can't access other programs while burning. You will just have to wait 10 minutes or until it is done. 

Not only does the PlexWriter 8/4/32A offer super speeds, it also offers very simple installation. All it requires it a power connector from the powers supply and a free IDE cable. I used the one from my CD-ROM and made the CDRW the master while the CD-ROM took the place of slave. I have heard stories about how it is better to have the CDRW on its own IDE cable, but I have not experienced any problems nor had any conflicts with doing it my way. Then you just boot up your machine and Windows installs the necessary drivers for the drive.