Customer Reviews

QPS External 24x10x40 Firewire CD-RW Drive

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

 

 

I am someone who likes music-mixing and CD-burning. The QPS Que! 24x10x40 is the best CDRW drive yet. I have a 366 MHz iBook with OS 9.2 and 128 MB RAM, and it works great. Although it isn't compatible with Apples iTunes, MP3 files can be taken from iTunes playlists and burned through Toast (I have Roxio Toast 5 Lite). Data CDs burn very fast, and it's backround burning, so I can check email or surf the web with burning. Audio takes longer to burn than data, but it's really fast. With Toast Audio Extractor and iTunes, along with Toast 5 Lite and my QPS CD burner, I can mix and match, copy, and even (if I upgrade) make my own Video CDs. It's the best of the best.

This may be a good drive, but I'll never find out. I purchased it as a Christmas gift for my daughter to use on her Mac G4 laptop. The drive was not recognized by the Apple (i tunes) software and the "toast" software that came with the drive scrambled many of her mp3 files. There may be a simple driver or configuration solution, but there was no useful information on this drive on their website (only sales pages and support information for their 16X drives which did not work for the new unit). QPS technical support did not respond to repeated phone messages (coast-to-coast long distance calls -- they do not have an 800 number for support) and the e-mail to their tech and customer support addresses given on the web site bounced. Out of time and patience, I am returning the drive.

This little burner was easy to set up. Plug into computer, plug into power convertor plug into a socket. Done. The drive itself is quiet until burning and then isn't too loud.

It's complements the PowerMac G4 tower esthetically and if you sit it on top, the tray just clears the handle. It comes with a snazzy case if you want to carry it around with you too.

It runs extremely smoothly in OS9 but it lost a star because there is no driver out there right now that supports this model for burning in OS X.

I looked at many of the reviews on various drives. I decided to go with QPS's Que Fire 24x 10x 40x drive.

Setup was a breeze and I had the drive up in about 5 minutes. I have since burned several cds and not one coaster! This drive is fast and fairly silent! I have been able to burn my cds at 24x consistantly with no problems on my Mac G4 350 PCI.
The software (Toast lite 5) performs well. The only thing that was a little discouraging was that itunes2 doesn't recognize this drive yet. Perhaps in the very near future Apple or QPS will provide a patch. Price is average, but the drive is worth it. I was also very pleased with Amazon.com's price, and service.

exercise caution when dealing with qps products. i have a g4/dual 450 with os 9. the installation cd would not appear on my desktop! this is such a basic function! as reported elsewhere, customer support has been non existent. other mac users have given this unit good reviews but unfortuantely, my experience was quite the opposite.

VERY POOR customer support. I purchased this product and have been unsuccessful getting it to work with Windows XP. QPS does not publish a support telephone number & has not even acknowledged any of my email correspondence or feedback through their support website.

The drive works well with my XP operating system and Nero CD burning software. The only major complaint that I have is not in regard to the performance, but rather with the design. The drive is big, most of which is plastic. There is a considerable amount of space wasted to make the drive look nice. The two plugs for the Firewire cable are located in the back of the drive and are very flimsy. This drive is used for more than one computer and so I must exchange the Firewire cables. I broke off one of the plugs within the first week, simply by pulling the Firewire cable out of the drive. The second plug is loose as well and I fear that even with the utmost care, I will eventually pull it out as well, simply by using the drive. Although the drive works great, I would suggest considering a drive from another manufacturer.

I had a LaCie Drive for a little over a year (long enough to not be in warranty anymore). My LaCie died on me and I bought this Burner a week ago, and haven't been able to get Toast 4 Deluxe to recognize the drive until today. I tried calling QPS support, and gave up after 20 min on hold. Finally I sent an email and the tech response was very helpful. Now I'm up and running and burning cd's fine (using Toast 4 Deluxe - I never was able to load the Lite version that came with the drive.) I haven't done any Music or MP3's yet, but saving files went smoothly.

FYI, Here is what the Tech recommended doing:

On MacOS 9.2 the iTunes and Disk Burner extensions were added to the base extension set of the operating system and are conflicting with the Toast extensions. For toast to work you would need to disable the iTunes and Disk
Burner extensions, or set up Toast on a separate extension set with these extensions disabled. The extensions involved are: Authoring Support, Disc Burner Extension, Firewire Authoring Support, iTunes Extension, SDAP Authoring Support, and USB Authoring Support.

I tried this drive and it seemed fine in general, but it won't work with Retrospect backup software. So if you want to do multi-CD backups on MacOS, you need something else. I switched to the QPS 16/10/40 version, and it works fine.

I too had high hopes for this drive but after one replacement and multiple tries to get it to work with XP, well I just don't have enough time & energy.

I too emailed for support and never received a response I did phone and after being on hold for awhile I was able to get an RMA however the replacement though working better is still not 100% friendly with XP - so its going back - TDK here I come!