Customer Reviews

Iomega CD-RW 52X24X52X DVD-ROM ( 32886 )

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

 

 

For a product that is supposed to support PCs and Macintosh you would think that hardware limitation for DVD would be spelled out but no such luck. While the CD-RW works reasonablly well it does take a little getting use to. However the DVD part is where this drive has the biggest problems.

The packaging says G3 or better but the fact of the matter is
Apple's DVD Player does not work on external drives on the older G3s and while the box said it supports MacOS X there is no alterernative DVD player provided for the Mac, so you have to find one.

Then there are performance issues. Even with a USB 2.0 PCI card in my G3/430 512 MB B&W Mac DVD audio and video were ridiculously choppy and when I compred performance to the built in USB 1.1 ports I found the drive performing exactly the same way and a little research showed the bottle neck to be in the video card not the port! When I upgraded to a G4 macmini the DVD performance improved dramatically indicating that the G3 requirement was more for the CD-RW fuctions than the DVD.

So if you want a good CD-RW drive this drive is great but if you want it as an external DVD you will definitely need either a powerful video card or perferably a G4 Mac.

I bought this drive from my local CompUSA for two reasons: I needed to backup my files, and I thought it would be cool to watch DVD movies on my Mac. The software for the DVD player was supposed to be included, right?? Wrong. Iomega does not offer software for the DVD player, but they didn't bother to say this on the box.

Here is the software compatibility list that I found in the user manual:

Iomega® HotBurn® Pro (PC users)
Charismac™ Discribe™ (Mac users)
Iomega® Automatic Backup (PC only)
Sonic CinePlayer™ (PC only)
MusicMatch® Jukebox™ (PC/Mac)
Adobe® PhotoShop® Album SE (PC only)

I'm giving this drive a 3-star rating because my experience with the CD-burner was great. The software installation was a snap, and it took about a minute to burn 350MB on a CD.

Even though I accomplished my original goal, I would not recommend this product to Mac users. In fact, I wish I had checked on Amazon before I did.

Bought this for a friend in US:
While it says Iomega on the box, but is, in fact a lite-on, according to Nero.
I have NEVER had a decent lite-on burner yet!!!!!!
(Three stars given, as i couldnt leave blank)