Melissa J. Perenson

LG Electronics GCE-8160B

LG's GCE-8160B, a 16X/10X/40X drive, is highly competitive in both price ($100) and performance. As it proved in our digital audio extraction and application installation tests, the drive is a speedy CD-ROM reader too: It took 1 minute, 53 seconds to extract 320MB of audio files and 3 minutes, 13 seconds to install Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business Edition.
Faster CD-RW drives can be had for just a little more.
The GCE-8160B posted a time of 5 minutes, 29 seconds when recording a CD from a 650MB image file, and it took 5 minutes, 32 seconds to record 650MB of files on the fly. It required just 1 minute, 31 seconds to burn 100MB of files to a CD-RW disc using packet writing. LG offers a one-year warranty and toll-free support for 11.5 hours on weekdays. The drive kit includes Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.03 and DirectCD 3.03 for CD mastering and packet-writing tasks, respectively. LG uses its own technology--dubbed SuperLink--to eliminate the incidence of buffer underruns during CD burning.
The unit's low price and the vendor's reputation for reliability make the GCE-8160B a solid choice.

Buying Information

LG Electronics GCE-8160B 16X/10X/40X, IDE, internal, 2MB buffer, buffer underrun protection, Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.03 and Direct CD 3.03; one-year warranty, toll-free support for 13 hours on weekdays and 8 hours on Saturday. $100 16X/10X/40X, IDE, internal, 2MB buffer, buffer underrun protection, Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.03 and Direct CD 3.03; one-year warranty, toll-free support for 13 hours on weekdays and 8 hours on Saturday. http://www.lgeus.com 800/243-0000