Hewlett Packard HP 20x Dvdrw External Lightscribe

List Price: $59.99 Discount Price: $37.05

Features:

• What's in the box? - External dvd1040e drive with DVD+-R/+-RW with DVD+-R up to 20x, double layer recording, DVD-RAM, and LightScribe direct disc labeling, Software CD including electronic user's guide,? Quick-Start placemat, Getting Help guide, USB 2.0 cable, Power supply
• Record to all major formats (+-R/+-RW, DVD-RAM, CD-R/RW), plus use LightScribe, on a single drive
• Record double-layer DVDs at up to 8x, recordable DVDs at up to 20x, rewritable DVDs at up to 8x, and DVD-RAMs at up to 12x
• Transfer hours of video onto DVD with your PC, then show on your TV
• Get excellent playback compatibility on DVD drives and players, thanks to HP's testing standards

Customer Reviews:

DVD Burner Great Review! [Posted on 2008-01-07]
I am very happy with the HP DVD Writer. It is easily installed onto your computer and has made my boyfriend incredibly happy (one of his XMas Gifts). Easy to use, Does not take up a lot of space, Works Great!

Great external drive [Posted on 2008-01-30]
Purchased this external drive 2 weeks ago because my internal drive was taking longer and longer to operate. As soon as I connected it to a USB port, Windows XP recognized it and assigned it as drive "G". It's worked flawlessly so far, both as a reader and a writer. Very much faster than my original internal drive which was only 8X. Finally got around to using the Lightscribe function, and I've got to say, it's pretty cool. The price is very reasonable, it's easy to install and operate, and I'm thinking of getting a second one to replace my other internal drive.

Relatively easy to burn data and audio CDs, not most advanced [Posted on 2008-02-25]
Regarding CD burners, I am an amateur reviewer.The last CD burner I purchased was back in 2002, and it had clunky usability at best. So this HP seemed like a really easy tool. I was able to install the drivers and Nero burning software quickly and burning data and audio CDs takes about 30 seconds of set up and burning only takes a few minutes at most.

Other users in my household find Nero's burning software unintuitive and wish they could just drag and drop data to be burned. That may be an option, but I just use Nero for them.

The sense I got from visiting HP's site for updated drivers and documentation (none) and then reading some reviews is that the technology for this model came out in 2004. My box said it was manufactured in 2007, but my guess is that there are more advanced burners and software available today. For basic needs, this the HP dvd1040e has been working fine for the last six months and was very inexpensive. No problems.

Good Writer, Lousy Nero Software Bundle [Posted on 2008-03-28]
Thought I would follow the instructions included with the writer. Installation went fine, the pc recognized the player. The install of the Nero software was a mess. It conflicted with the already existing burner software on my pc.
The Nero software has limitations, the player as-is will burn to DVD-R. With the Nero software you lose that functionality, due to some sort of licensing conflict.
What's the point of owning a writer, if the third party software doesn't allow you to write? I uninstalled the Nero bundle, but evidently it had made a change to my pc that would still not let the DVD writer to write.
Had to perform a system restore, and now the writer writes to DVD-R. Yay! Thats what I wanted.
Unfortunately the added feature of the software was going to be Lightscribe. But Nero bundled it into their all-in-one (all Seven-in-one!) executable, and doesn't allow for installing JUST the Lightscribe software.
It's not that important a feature. If I want it so bad, I'll just buy a copy online, or just use a magic marker.
Also, the Nero software wants you to associate all media files so that they run on it's software. Thats all your video files MOV, AVI, MPEG..., all your audio files mp3, wmv, wav..., all your image files BMP, JPG...(you have to deselect, to stop it from doing that)
The HP writer seems to work fine, HP (IMO) made an error in selecting the Nero bundle to include with the writer.

Great Burner, Crappy Software [Posted on 2008-04-18]
This burner is very easy to use, just plug it in and go. I had to get a USB card because I didn't have USB 2.0. The burner will work without, but it will take two hours to burn a dvd. After the USB upgrade it took only minutes to burn a dvd. The only thing I would recommend is to not use the burning software that is included (Nero). It lagged my computer and would abort the burning process at times. I tried the online free 21 day trial of CloneDVD 2 and then decided to purchase it because it works so well. Overall this is an excellent burner, good price, and the lightscribe feature is nice.

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