Burn Fast, Even on a Mac!
Kevin Martin | Staff Writer

Are you an Apple Imac or G4 user lacking a fast cd burner, or are you a proud owner of a recently built PC that includes 1394 (firewire/Ilink), but have nothing to use on your 1394 port? Are you the computer geek with a fast laptop, and a slow-assed cd-writer? I was very disappointed to learn that the fastest burner available with my Dell at the time was an 8/4/4, but I did not despair. The busy media fanatics at Sony, in their wisdom, have taken on the challenge.

Here are the results of their toils and late nights.

The Sony CRX1600L is a fast Firewire EXTERNAL CD-RW drive. At speeds reaching 16/10/40, the drive will burn the average music CD in just over 5 minutes. Compare that to 30 minutes on a 4x drive. In addition, since it's external, it's as portable as you need (loan it to a friend?), and doesn't take a precious drive bay on your desktop computer. It's also easy to use. For most machines you simply plug into power, plug into your 1394/Firewire/I-Link port, and away you go. Depending on where you get your burner from, it may come with proprietary writing software That works very well, or if you are lucky, it comes with Roxio's Easy CD Creator Deluxe Edition. This drive works great on both PC and Apple systems, and soon will even be useable by certain Sony digital camcorders.

The Sony I-link line of CD-burners are available at http://www.sonystyle.com
or at http://www.warehouse.com.

Kevin Martin is Whim's resident electronic toy freak, I mean Geek! Even on his limited budget he manages to get his hands on nifty hardware, and fun toys. He can be reached at kevo@iname.com for demonstrations of many of the toys he evaluates.