Advantages: Quality and reliability of drive
Disadvantages: Outdated and discontinued model

...The Teac 532 cd rom drive is an cd-rom reader that is designed to be fitted internally into a PC. I had this unit in my PC for about 2 years before I decided to upgrade the whole system. I paid about £120 for this drive and at the time 32x read speed was about the industry standard. How times change as now we are looking up to 72x read speeds on cd-rom drives, which make this unit look positively tortoise-like! Specs This cd-rom drive is compatible with operating systems up to Windows 98. It has a 32x read speed and needs to be fitted into a IDE interface inside the computer. The drive measures, (W) 5.75” (H) 1.65” (D) 7.56”. It weighs 2.65lbs. Overall these are the standard measurements for a cd-rom drive, otherwise it wouldn’t fit into your computer! On the front panel of the unit, from left to right there are... Read review

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Advantages: Can practise your test like it is the real thing
Disadvantages: Mouse pointer on hazard perception

..., road signs, hazards, driving safely e.t.c... In addition to this part of the test, the government introduced a second part known as 'hazard perception'. For this you are shown 14 video clips filmed from inside a car. On each clip there is one hazard, except on one clip where there is two. The cd rom which is made by a company called Focus and costs £9.99 from a number of retailers including W.H. Smith and Waterstones, really helped me with my theory test, in particular the hazard perception. On the CD rom there are the following features.... -The entired DSA driving theory question bank (1000+questions) -8 official hazard perception clips, along with an additional 50 clips - 280 video and photograpg questions on observation and common driving mistakes -a progress monitor which tells you how ready you bare for the exam -virtual... Read review

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Advantages: Aztech and Delta drives, as an example, are much cheaper than bigger names
Disadvantages: If you buy cheaper CD ROM drives expect lower performance

...I have mixed feelings about Aztech CD-ROM Drives – and other cheap makes. Everything seemed fine until the speed's started to increase to 24x and beyond. I was used to slower drives and wonder quite why anyone would need a CD-ROM to go so fast – but who am I to know? I have never had any problems with CD-ROM running at around 10 to 16 speed. Anyway, I found on a 32x Aztech drive that it couldn’t get up to full speed without cutting off before it could read data. It was a never-ending loop of stopping and starting, making installation of any program a long drawn out affair. Eventually I had the unit replaced with a Delta CD ROM. It’s better, but still seems to suffer from its high speed at times. I would recommend, and it’s only my opinion, that you spend a bit more and purchase a Yamaha, Philips, Teac or any other well... Read review

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Advantages: Easy to use, actually looks like the real thing
Disadvantages: TIme consuming and not much fun

...Currently I am a student so I am more than comfortable with taking exams, in the past four years I've taken, literally 40 exams for one thing and another, but the most nerve wracking by far was my theory test. I found the idea of a CD to teach me everything I needed to know I found really appealing, whats more it only cost me £10 from Woolworth's so I hadn't got a lot to loose, and I was not disappointed at all, I passed my theory first time with 100% on the theory and 84% on the Hazard Perception. The biggest advantage that the CD ROM had was it was exactly like the actual test even down to things like the font and text colours, and when I saw the real thing it did look really familiar, however in replicating the real test it did make it seem quite cold and uninviting. After doing three of these tests in a row you really want... Read review

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Advantages: Good range of tasks, keeps kids involved and interested, genuine learning tool
Disadvantages: have to wait for sounds and instructions to finish before you can interact.

...to make an animal or object appear with a voice over telling you what it is. My son watched the screen with great interest for about 30 minutes and started trying to say some of the items and looked very pleased with himself so very fast results there. FInally, each activity also has a "printables" section and variable skill levels that affect the controls as well as the difficulty of the task in hand. A minor irritation was that you couldn’t use the mouse until any talking or animation had finished which may frustrate younger children that couldn't understand the need to wait. Apart from that though this is a fantastic title. If you only buy your toddler one CD-ROM, make it this one.... Read review

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Advantages: Quality Build, No messing inside your PC, Bundled Software
Disadvantages: Maybe a bit pricey.

...Having only a 52xCD rom in my rather dull (but quite adequate) IBM workstation I was missing the ability to burn cd’s backing up data important data that I could with previous machines. Not fancying taking the lid of, and removing fiddly blanking plates - scraping skin off my thumbs, I decided upon the external USB approach, since like most, the PC is equipped with a fast USB2.0 interface. The Iomega CD-RW 48x24x48x USB 2.0 drive appeared to be a good choice, Iomega being a well trusted and reliable manufacturer. I paid around £60 , but you may find it cheaper if you shop around. I did come across lesser brands with a similar spec at lower prices, but I felt they would lack the quality. Upon opening, I was presented with a very solid piece of kit in a jet black finish. The box also contained a suitable USB cable, a figure... Read review

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Advantages: nice look :)
Disadvantages: almost every thing is worthless.....

...well, as far as this drive is concerned... firstly, it looks very smart and beautiful, but when it is connected to the pc system.. then it shows it's bad performance and i'd say very bad !!! though, it is 52x drive and the company claims that it has faster access time.... but actually, it is a guy with competition less than 32x... :( one major draw back of this drive is it's tray's bad in n out behaviour......... it comes outwards and inwards very fast ... and it seems that it would break the spring of the back supporting tray... and in some cases... it actually did it.... when a friend of mine told me about the broken plastic parts inside the drive due to the fast going tray inwards...... second one is that it often does't read cds even the new ones... i don't know why a new cd rom drive did't read mine cds and also new ones... Read review

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Advantages: Very fast drive. Good software and updates. Looks gorgeous.
Disadvantages: Needed firmware update (free download)

...It is easy to get skeptical as the onslaught of technology goes from 1GHz to 2GHz to 3GHz. Is it really 3 times faster? Does a 52X CD-ROM drive really read 6 times faster than an old 8X drive? Is Double Data Rate memory twice as fast as normal SDRAM? For the most part, the answer is a stonking "NO". There are overheads in all of the above, but they ARE faster, just not in a straight line from zero. So when I had to buy a CD-RW drive for my PC, I was loathe to go faster than 16X or 24X writing. After all, a 700MB data CD is 80 minutes, so 16X writing should mean it takes (quick calculation) 5 minutes to write a full CD. I usually used my old CD-RW drive about once a day, so it wasn't like I had queue of disks to write, just the odd