Sony DRU 820A (DVD±RW, ±R DL, / DVD-RAM drive - IDE)

Pros: Dependable, Attractive, Affordable

Cons: Needs new driver after buying

Summary: This is my first DVD writable drive. It covers all the basic formats including DVD-RAM. Sony has a list of media by certain manufacturers that work better with this product (See their support site). Installation was pretty easy. The product comes with a black and a white face plate. The white one (which is more attractive) was on the product and I switched it to the black face plate to match my computer. Honestly, I found changing the face plate to be more difficult than actually installing the drive in my Dell Dimension (I replaced the original DVD read-only drive that came with the computer). Upon booting up, Windows XP did its job in acknowledging the drive and I loaded all the software pretty easily. Software includes a very nice Nero suite that has plenty of capability for an OEM package. Unfortunately, the product came with an older 1.0a version of the firmware and there's a 1.0b available at Sony's support site to download and install which I recommend as it apparently tweaked some aspects of disk writing. So far I've only burned (Sony) DVD-R with the drive but every disk has come out perfect. This was a good buy ($69.99) after rebate and so far I have no complaints and could rate it even higher than an 8 in the months to come.