From: Mike Ford (mikeford_at_socal.rr.com)
Date: Tue Oct 03 2000 - 18:04:15 EDT
>I then , post out this GREAT deal on this wonderful list hoping for other
>members to get into the deal. On the side i was hoping maybe if they can
>find an extra one in their local staple stores they
>are willing to help me buy one too. Only after that, i submitted this deal
>to www.techbargains.com and other web sites.
I am not saying it was "the" factor, but once posted to techbargains the
chances of a thinkpad list member finding one dropped by half or more, and
with it your chances of getting one from a list member dropped the same. I
can't speak for others, but my plan was one for me, one for ebay, one for
you. Unfortunately as others have mentioned, they were pretty rare here on
the west coast (only carried by "A" stores, the big ones). I found one at
the first Staples I tried Sunday after lunch (Orange, CA), but neither of
the next two stores I tried even had a place for anything but the HP and
Zip CDRW. I have no doubt that the employee network kicked in shortly after
I left each store either.
What nobody has mentioned so far is if the unit is worth it. Its been my
first big lesson in USB not working out of the box, and clearly shows the
limits of USB. Its fussy about plugging and unplugging and when the unit
power needs to be turned off and on, auto insertion notification must be
turned off on ALL CD drives, and 4x is the max apparently, and pushing it,
for any USB device. Some software flat doesn't work with it, I tried the
popular shareware utility, BackUP and it gives me an error -52, doesn't see
it I guess. For most programs, including the Sony Extreme CD burner it
shows up as a CRX120e Atapi, so don't get bugged if you see that. Sony
support was quick and helpfull, even on a Sunday night.
Right now I think I would still give the edge to having a nice internal
SCSI or IDE CDRW, but I think over time as I get more USB computers around
the house it will be a better and better item to have.
Anybody have suggestions for backup software to use with a USB burner?
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