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Burning CD's on a laptop

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MaxCast

Burning CD's on a laptop
« on: 11 Mar 2004, 10:34 pm »
Okay, I am looking at a new laptop and want to be able to copy my CD's and make comp discs.  Do I go with an internal burner/drive or get an external burner?  I don't see the choices in laptops as far as customizing or upgrading like desk tops so my choice in sound cards are limited?  

I've been looking at a Dell or Toshiba.  The dell site lets you build your own which is nice.  Anyone have experience with the noise levels of these two computers?  Looking to keep it under 1K.  I want as much RAM as I can get and a burner.

Thanks,
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jqp

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Burning CD's on a laptop
« Reply #1 on: 11 Mar 2004, 11:05 pm »
Laptop cd drives are low cost/light weight/out of balance, so they are definitely not optimized for high fidelity burning. The problem is that even with a great external burner, your source is still the crappy internal CD-ROM. You could burn an image from an external drive, then write the image to the external drive.
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MaxCast

Burning CD's on a laptop
« Reply #2 on: 12 Mar 2004, 01:04 pm »
Quote
You could burn an image from an external drive, then write the image to the external drive


That's how I thought it could work with an external drive...copy to hard drive then burn back to a CDR.

Anyone have recommendations on software for this type of thing?

As you can tell I am a new to burning and want to avoid  "Oh, I should have done it that way" remorse. :?
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Carlman

Burning CD's on a laptop
« Reply #3 on: 12 Mar 2004, 02:07 pm »
I've been very pleased with the last 4 Toshiba's I've bought.  I don't care for Dell but, I'm probably in the minority on that.  I've just fixed too many of them.

For under 1,k each, I bought 2 Toshiba "Satellites".  One is a home version and the other is a business version.  The only real difference being size (smaller for biz) and O/S (Pro vs. Home XP).

I have no issue burning cd's on either of these cheap, unbalanced drives. ;)  I have an external drive as well but, I don't remember what it's called and I wouldn't recommend it anyway.  However, that's more for pc's that don't have a burner.

I'd recommend the Toshiba and no external drive initially and continue researching the best methods... After you get the best method, do a comparison to see if you can hear a difference.  If you can, I'll do what you did! :)

-C
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MaxCast

Burning CD's on a laptop
« Reply #4 on: 15 Mar 2004, 01:23 am »
Thanks, C.  I will probably do just that.  I saw in the paper today that BB or Toshiba will let you customize it.  I will have to find out more about it.
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satfrat

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Burning CD's on a laptop
« Reply #5 on: 15 Mar 2004, 09:13 am »
ShopatHome has had a killer Sony Vaio Pentium4 2.2 notebook with a built-in CD burner for the last couple of weeks now on their TV presentation. It's quite the package for a laptop that has the power of most desktops and I think the price was around $1500. The software that came with it was most impressive. :o www.shopathometv.com Regards, Robin
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Thump553

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Burning CD's on a laptop
« Reply #6 on: 15 Mar 2004, 01:40 pm »
For software I would reccommend Nero 5 or 6 (essentially no difference for CD burning).  Its powerful and flexible and comes with many drives as a freebie.  My second reccomendation would be Alcohol 120% if you are backing up protected things.

I ALWAYS burn from my hard drive (different IDE chain) and I use a desktop system relatively dedicated to burning.  Unless you have a SCSI system, burning on the fly (CD drive to CD burner) is a very good way to introduce errors.

I wouldn't worry about unbalanced drives.  If they actually were unbalanced they would self-destruct very quickly at the speeds CDs spin.  The only technical specification I would look at is DAE (digital audio extraction), which is frequently hard to find out.  The better the DAE the better quality the extraction.  Plextor drives and burners are great but pricey.  I've used Lite On and Sony drives and been happy with them.
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JoshK

Burning CD's on a laptop
« Reply #7 on: 15 Mar 2004, 01:43 pm »
I rec'd going with an external burner for the most flexibility, but do your homework and get a good one.  It will last you longer than your laptop will.   If you really want to go all out, get a PCMCIA SCSI adapter and an external SCSI burner and then it will not pull your resources to burn and you can get a cheap NEC SCSI external CDrom off ebay (I got one for $15) to read from.
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sunshinedawg

Burning CD's on a laptop
« Reply #8 on: 15 Mar 2004, 03:10 pm »
Quote from: jqp
Laptop cd drives are low cost/light weight/out of balance, so they are definitely not optimized for high fidelity burning. The problem is that even with a great external burner, your source is still the crappy internal CD-ROM. You could burn an image from an external drive, then write the image to the external drive.


You should not be as worried about the internal cd-rom of the laptop as the software you use for extraction.  Try something like http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/  The software is slow compared to other rippers but will give you a PERFECT copy every time(no matter what the source cd-rom drive is) assuming the source disc is in good shape.  I use a yamaha external USB burner with my laptop with audio master quality setting(it burns the pits on the cd-r deeper and longer for less jitter on playback). http://www.yamahamultimedia.com/yec/tech/aam_01.asp

GO AVS!
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