Samsung SE-S184M - Disk drive - DVD?RW (?R DL) / DVD-RAM - 18x/18x/12x - Hi-Speed USB - external - LightScribe

Discount Price: $44.00

Customer Reviews:

Takes some tweaking, but I finally got it right [Posted on 2008-01-16]
I bought this drive to generate disks that I give to clients in my photography business. At first I was very disappointed- the images were not clear or sharp, and not very dark. It looked pathetic.

The secret was to download the latest drivers from the Samsung website. The new drivers included some adjustment sliders that allow you to darken the image and add some contrast. Evidently these drivers are new and improved over what ships with the drive. This really solved the problems. I usually include a small photo on each disk I hand out, and it really makes an impression. To create this photo, I convert a high-res image into a very low resolution, small file size greyscale graphic. I use Photoshop, but any reasonable photo package should work.

The second hard-earned lesson is that you pretty much have to use the included software to generate disks- even if you do not use lightscribe. Just trying to use Microsoft Explorer to generate a CD/DVD did not work reliably- usually it can not even find the drive.

Once I got through those two issues, everything works great. I can usually design just the graphic/text I want in just a few minutes, and it typically takes about 20 minutes to generate the image on the disk- at the highest resolution. With a little practice, it really looks professional. You can save images and use them again.

The quality of the lightscribe discs seems to matter. As with most things, the more you pay for them, the better they seem to work.

I only use this on a PC, so not sure how Mac users would make out.

Not enough tweaking can get this drive to work [Posted on 2008-02-10]
I received this drive thinking I could burn information on one side and have a professional label on the other side. No instructions (except on the disk) were included for installing this drive. While the computer did recognize the drive and "Read" the disk, it would not write data nor did it even recognize the Light Scribe function. After going to the Samsung site for a "Firmware" update and spending hours trying to find the update for this model, it said this model doesn't exist or some such nonsense. When I rebooted the computer, the drive wasn't even recognized although power was on and the drive door opened and closed. I tried it on 3 different computers by 3 different users. After the first computer, the drive was not recognized by either of the last two. Samsung customer support is non existent via phone or e mails. I have requested an RMA from the vendor through Amazon and we'll see what transpires.

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