Customer Reviews

COMBO DRIVE Super Slim CD-RW / DVD-ROM USB External Drive (Black) for ASUS EeePC Acer Aspire and any computer with USB 2.0 or 1.0 ports

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this so that I could (1)Burn/play CDs, (2) Play CD/DVD Rom games and (3) Play DVDs. This product only does two out of three of these things. I really wanted to be able to watch DVDs but that's the one thing it doesn't do. When trying to play a DVD it says the DVD is not meant for play back in my "region," but the DVDs have worked with other DVD players. It's kind of suspicious actually. Other than that it's fine.

Product looked nice out of the box, so plugged it into my XP. But after a brief whirr, and being told new hardware had been detected, nothing happened. Tried it on my Windows 7 laptop, same result. I think the driver was defective or out of date. So, went to Toshiba website to find the latest one, but it's no longer supported by them, so no luck. Gave up and returned the product.

Three and a half stars.I bought this because the DVD drive in my MacBookPro stopped working and I needed to burn the CDs for an audiobook to iTunes. I didn't want to spend much, and I didn't. That said, you do get what you pay for, and I found that this drive would not work entirely properly if both of the USB plugs were not plugged in at the same time. This took the form of the last track on the CD, or the last couple of tracks, not transferring to the computer. It *might* have been the CDs themselves that were the problem, but this behavior did disappear when I plugged in both USB plugs. Presumably the drive needs the extra power from the second plug to work right.

Of course, this is inconvenient if you want to use the drive all the time. My laptop only has 2 USB ports, and I have all sorts of stuff plugged into it via an adaptor, like a keyboard and my iPod dock. I don't need to use the CD player very often, though, so the tradeoff of price for the occasional hassle is fine with me. It's also good that I don't have to find a power outlet for it when I do need to use it. So, I'm reasonably satisfied.

This was my second choice for this device. My first choice was an extremely popular Name Brand Device WHICH DID NOT WORK OUT OF THE BOX! I read all the reviews on this one, decided to buy it and will never look back. It is about half the price of the Name Brand one I could not use and it works OUT OF THE BOX without the need of any special software being loaded! It is so quiet I have to touch it to feel if it is working. My only complaint would be; I think it could use a small pilot light on it to show it is running! It works well with my Sonic program for burning DVD/CD's on my Desktop Gateway with Windows XP; it performed flawlessly for installing Windows 7 Home Premium on a Gateway 10" notebook computer updated from Vista. I highly recommend this product over the name brand units out there and the price is right on top of it all! RGGale

is very useful for notebook if you dont have in your PC a CD rom
worked well
Thank You
Have a Good Day..!
Rosario

Received a gift of a 3 pound Asus EE Netbook for travel and wanted to play and burn CDs and DVDs with it sometimes. Plugged this one in and got the message that my Windows 7 Starter won't play DVDs, but I should get an upgrade to Windows 7 Premium Home or buy a plug-in to play DVDs. On the Windows website, they show no plug-in available for Windows 7 Starter that will play DVDs, only the Windows 7 Premium Home will do that. They want more for their upgrade, so went back to Amazon for a downloadable one for less, with the key to be sent to me in a few days, so no, not an instant fix/download.

I feel this will solve it, but have not tried it yet.

Looks and feels like a solid little player and installed as plug and play without my help.

This thing never worked. Plugged in both USBs and doesn't power - no light, eject button does nothing. Unfortunately I didn't open the box until 2 months after I bought it so guess I just wasted that $$.

The Asus DVD unit I ordered around the same time works great. I'd recommend buy the Asus and skip this thing!

It is exactly what I needed for my netbook. Works perfectly. . .playing DVD & CD. Great for burning CDs. I spent a lot of time researching for this kind of product. This is the perfect addition for any netbook. Very compact.

I am not tech savvy at all. I have an older computer, and I enjoy listening to CDs and DVDs and playing a few games on it. However the old drive on the computer began failing. Completely baffled by the prospect of installing a new one, I opted for this CD/DVD drive. It worked perfectly out of the box.

Amazon shipped it in a box which contained the manufacturer's box. The manufacturer's box is well packaged with foam as well, so this is a good bet for home delivery. The unit arrived pristine.

This CD/DVD drive uses 2 USB ports. After I plugged it in, the computer detected it. There was no installation or headache. I inserted a game to test it out, and it read the disc fine. No drivers or instal disc or anything. It was beautifully simple.

The drive is very quiet when operating. It has a small button on the face to eject discs. The only thing that may have made it better would be if it could also write to media. But for the price and ease of use, I am extremely happy with this unit.

I read complaints about cheaper external drives with, well, a cheap look and feel, so I spent a few extra bucks for this drive. This is a solid piece of hardware and still relatively light weight. It only burns CDs (haven't tried that yet), but that will just be gravy on my primary use for the device which is reading CDs and DVDs. Mission accomplished with ease!

UPDATE: But...it only worked for a week...so I never tried burning a CD.