Art, Thanks for the info, especially on the CD-RW disk, Your comment that they should be more reliable fits your description well. I'm going to look into purchasing them - are you aware of any that are considered better. It would seem that all of these are subject to how well the coatings are handled. While the RW type would be more expensive, there is always the possibility of reuse, so that may mitigate that problem to some extent. Like you, I had heard that the CD-RW was less reliable than a CD-R, but I hadn't looked further. I had figured that my old HP had a hotter laser in general, and that perhaps the electronics - mechanics is a little more forgiving since it was not intended to work with higher speeds. I am going to see if I can get it to work with current CD-RW discs. Speed isn't a major factor - the PC - P4 that the HP drive lives on is not my main machine and is networked with my Mac G4 Dual. If you know of a new burner that you would recommend, I am aware that the HP has a lot of years on it from the point of view of technology and may not be compatible with my next machine even, so it prolly is time to start thinking about an upgrade. Here again, the issue isn't speed, it is reliability for both reading and writing. It is my experience that there will be some units from companies such as HP or perhaps Sony (at least in the past) that are much more forgiving, much more compatible with everything else than some of the others. Unfortunately, I am no longer around enough different equipment to have any idea which units those might be.
Again, thanks for the description of the mechanism of CD-RW. That mechanism gives me a much greater sense of confidence than what I knew of the other approach. -Brad -To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. Richard Feynman -The Character of Physical Law - On 9/12/04 4:03, "Arthur Entlich" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Brad, > > Interesting posting, and something most of us can certainly relate to. > > A small bit of technological information to perhaps clarify some issues. > > The CDs you get which are pre-written with things like software (and > music or images, for that matter) are not at al the same process as the > ones you burn. Mass-produced CDs are actually press molded using glass > plates that have the "mirror image" pits and bumps cut into them with a > special machine. These CDs are more similar to an LP record, an that > molten plastic is poured into a glass die, and an impression is created. > This disk is then coated on one side (the side with the pits and bumps > on it) with vaporized aluminum (or sometimes other metals) and then a > clear varnish, followed by a label (made of quick drying enamels or > other paints) is applied on top of that. These are CD-ROM disks in the > sense that they are "READ ONLY", they cannot be written to and never > were in the usual sense of the word. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body