Customer Reviews

Iomega SUPER DVD WRITER 16X ( 33068 )

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I recently purchased this Iomega burner to burn DVDs from my Mac ibook G4 (purchased in Jan 2004). Right out of the box, this drive was ready to go to work. Thus far, I am very pleased with my purchase.

Using third party sharware (available on www.mac.com) and Roxio Popcorn, I find it very easy to burn DVDs using my mac laptop. I did not install and presently do not use any of the programs provided by Iomega. Using other programs I have experienced very few errors, so I consider it reliable after using it to burn roughly 25 disks. I have not tried to burn data disks or record from a VCR.

With my processor speed, it takes about 20-30 minutes to burn and finalize a 4.7GB DVD-R. Having discussed this product with friends - processor speed will greatly impact the time it takes to burn a DVD. A friend with an older Mac Powerbook (at least 3yrs old) reports that it can take up to 2 hours to burn a disk, whereas another friend with a G4 ibook (only a few months old) says that he can burn a disk in 15 minutes or less. If you have an older computer, it may be worthwhile to upgrade the entire system before purchasing a drive like this one.

The drive weighs less than I expected - so it is compact and portable, if you wanted to take it somewhere or carry it in your backpack. By comparison, it weighs roughly half of the weight of my La Cie external harddrive.

When it's copying a disk, it does "hum," but the sound is by no means bothersome.

Additionally, there are some maufacturer's rebates floating around on the web (Spring 2005) and the price is steadily dropping on Amazon and elsewhere. I think this is a solid buy and Mac-users, don't fear, this drive will work.

For perfect DVDs, this drive is fast and smooth. However, when it encounters a bad block on a DVD, it spends over a minute fiddling with itself trying to read that precious block. Meanwhile, the movie is frozen. This makes it almost unusable for DVD playback. I broke a brand new Incredibles DVD from its case, and that played perfectly. But any DVD that has the slightest imperfection is a problem.

I haven't tested the recording capability. I was hoping to buy only 1 drive for both playback and recording. This one doesn't fit the bill.

This drive worked nice for a year. Then 16 days after the warrenty is up it died.

The laser no longer reads the dvd. Tried all types of dvd's and cords even different

computers and nothing. Electronics arn't built to last anymore there just built cheap!

I've always been a sucker for the iomega/bernoulli promise: a little hardware device with swappable media and big storage.

But true to form, this drive delivers a large bill of goods and is short on (third party) software fulfillment.

It did install nicely, although there are a updates to apply. The DVD reads smoothly over a network - perhaps due to the slow USB speed. The "Hot Burn" software makes an adequate cd/dvd data disk. But what frys me is the DVD movie creation software - it will not install at all -- says it wants windows media player 7.1 or greater -- is the top issue on the support website -- they have a lame fix and involves unstalling media player then reinstalling an earlier version. Right!

I also fell for the "REV" drive - boy does it's backup software bite the big one!

If you just want hardware to use folder options with you will be fine. I wish iomega wouldn't lo-ball with their third party included software.

stopped working after 1 month

starts burning dvd and never finishes;

some dvds which it finished writing are not readable later on

I am testing this USB DVD burner after receiving 3 days. Be aware of this USB drive if you intend to use your owned solfware to burn DVD. Because you sometimes need to use a different burning DVD solfware to match with every entire drive on your PC's, this drive is easy to be hung up due to the speed of its USB 2.0 connection and its microcode. Everytime it happens to be hung up, you have to unplug the AC connector at back of PC. This is a worse case to be avoid in multiple disconnection of the main power plug. About double layer! Only one format on every PC is a basic concept of application. Two formats between single and double layer can not be used on the same PC for reading and writing on both single and double layer drives. For example, the format of a disk making from a single layer drive can not be used on a drive of double layer. Therefore, the burning DVD solfwares are very different between the old and new drives.
Other words, this drive is made by Lite-On company. It is an OEM product.
So far during testing, its drive is recognized by Window XP right away because it is certified by the big PC Window operation. The speed is of course slower than its spec due to USB connnection.
Finally the hung up problem is very tough for every company that is making a USB 2.0 DVD burner. This hung-up depends on the mother board, the speed of CPU and layout/design of each PC company. So its microcode drive needs to be updated time by time for improving its operation if its company wants to do so.

After 9 days of testing, the pros and cons are as follow.
PROS.
_Read and Write movie files are faster than any 16X internal drive on P4 533FSB and 800FSB of desktop.
_R/W is also fast enough at = or >1.6GHz on Centrino laptop.
_Write compress movie files without any errors and its format (compress file on a single layer) is played smoothly on any progressive scan DVD player.

CONS.
_R/W mode is very slow on P4 Mobile 2.0GHZ 400FSB on laptop.
_Time response to CPU through USB 2.0 is slow as easy to be hung up if mouse button is pressed during this burner on its incomplete stage. This means hitting mouse button too fast should get hung-up.
_USB 1.1 is not acceptable to play any movie on this burner.
_Removing USB connector without stopping UBS bus should get hung-up.