CR & CRW RECORDERS

byTed Peterson
CR & CD-RW recorders have all changed both what they can do, and the total cost. What was printed about them in 12002-3 is now all out of date.
Untill the early 90's you could not own a CR recorder in the US. The recording companys had the US Government passed a law that if you wanted to record on a CD you had to go outside the US. This law changed in the early 90's and now we can have a CD Recorder
CD's are a way to store a little over 630 megs of memory, (most people will list 650 but most CD will not go over 640 megs of space.) If you are picking up a CD recorder only make sure you buy one that is a multi-tasking. Some of the old one's are not, and if you have one of the old ones you will not be able to add a item on the CD after stopping the first time.
Most of the CDR recorders that are on the market now will record at 8X but will play back at from 24X and up. They can be used as a CD player only when you are not recording
There are three types of CD recorders for sale. I have all 3 of them.
The first types of CD sold for the US market were the ones like the Pinnacle Micro Recordable CD. They were good, but any CD recorded on them could not be read on a regular CD player. You had to use that recorder to be able to read that CD. The cost, when I picked it up in 1993, was $1,500.00. They are no longer being sold.
The second groups are the ones like the Philips CD Recorders. Any CD recorded on them could be read on any CD player that will play at 4X on higher. The main draw back that these CD recorders had was that a CD made on one of them could not be read on any CDs player that was slower then 4X. They are also no longer being made.
The 3rd type of CD recorders are what are the Rewritable Recorders. This is the type that are for sale at this time. The cost will be from $100.00 and up.
The CD on these CD recorders can be recorded over and over up to 5 times on the same disk, but these disks cost about 3 times the cost of blank CDs.
You can make regular CDs by using the CDR disks. These disks will cost from $.10 to $.79 each (less then the cost of a Zip disk but with over 6 times the space)
The cost of these recorders can be any thing from $100.00 to $400.00 . They can be SCSI, Printer port connections, USB, built in, etc. Most of them will record at 4X and all the new ones will play back at 24X or more. I have 3 of them. The first one is one built in to my big old computer. The next one is a small one (about the size of a VHS tape) that plugs into my laptop. The 3rd one is in my new desktop computer and with it I can make a 100 meg CD in about 4 minutes.
Some of the CD recorder will lose about 6 megs of space between the last item on your disk and the new item placed on at a different time.
With the price of blank CD's under 30 cents the price of the labels the same you can make backups for you computer. You can place 640 megs on a disk and therefor if you have 1300 megs on your C drive it would only take 2 CDs. You can also save anything that you have been saving on your hard drive, 3 1/2" disks, and zip. I save every thing on CDs, even files under 100 megs. In the past I wanted to save some thing and saved it on a 3 1/2" and then forgot about it and saved some thing over it. You cannot do this with a CD as once it is recorded it is there forever.
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