On Sat, 2005-07-30 at 18:11 +0100, Ashley T. Howes, Ph.D. wrote:
I have questions on two areas. The first is a recommendation for a good producer of DVD Rewriters. Most seem to support all the formats including dual layer. I'm planning to use only DVD+RW really. By good, I mean regular firmware and driver updates, excellent build quality and reliability. Normal stuff really :)
IMO Sony stuff is rubbish and generally one of the most locked down in terms of region encoding DRM etc...Follow the golden rule of never buying media or drives from a content company.
Plextor is good, their drives have never let me down, but sometimes their price/performance ratio is a little off.
My NEC 2500 has been flawless and I have heard only good things from others, there are plenty of supported and unsupported ROM updates for those drives and mine has never made a coaster.
For a budget choice LiteOn are ok too.
The second item is a recommendation for a good online source of components. You know, a company with a real returns policy and good support :)
On-Line is difficult because it is hard to offer good service when the margins are so tight (a lot of the on-line guys are working on 5% margins now) That's one of the reasons I aborted setting up a business selling stuff on-line.
Personally I'd use someone like scan and accept the fact that they can be a nightmare for returns. Of course my business can supply a number of components and I like to think that we have reasonable aftersales support, but we hold practically nothing in stock and can if I am honest sometimes work out a little more expensive than the likes of scan.