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Gone
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join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

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Re: Hard Drive Deals

When I hear the name Plextor, the only thing that comes to mind are CD burners that cost four times as much as the same thing from someone else.

donoreo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-30
North York, ON

donoreo

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said by Gone:

When I hear the name Plextor, the only thing that comes to mind are CD burners that cost four times as much as the same thing from someone else.

Oh yes. At one time, they were the drives to get, but they never dropped their prices when the rest of the market did and the premium was not worth it.

urbanriot
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Canada

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said by Gone:

When I hear the name Plextor, the only thing that comes to mind are CD burners that cost four times as much as the same thing from someone else.

What donoreo said. Back in the day the Plextor's had functions you couldn't find in other drives. At one point it seems they simply gave up...

Gone
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join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

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They were something special back before CD-ROM drives were commodity items, and had some decent burners back in the early days of those products. They quickly became irrelevant though, especially since they still demanded a hefty price premium for their name despite being absolutely nothing fancy in terms of product.

To this day, I just can't shake that image of Plextor. I kind of even feel the same way toward their SSDs, too.

urbanriot
Premium Member
join:2004-10-18
Canada

urbanriot

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Oh, no, they were the cream of the crop well into the DVD-RW days too. They were one of the first with SATA DVD-RW drives and right out the gate the error correction tests were great coupled with extremely low error rates on scratched discs. They'd also put out firmware updates for better media compatibility, continually, more than anyone else.

Your average person wouldn't appreciate the difference but for people that were archiving music, scratched discs, overburning (at the time a newer concept), and navigating around copy protections, it was the best you could get.

I believe it was around 2004 that the company took a nosedive and stopped producing anything of merit.

Gone
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join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

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Plextor were never bad drives, they just weren't anywhere near as good as they premiums demanded made them out to be, including in the DVD-R era. I was using Pioneer drives back in those days that worked just as well for all those things you mentioned the "average person" wouldn't care about that cost half as much, including regular firmware updates for new media and all sorts of other stuff.

The problem back in those days was that there was also a lot of shit and some companies even would provide one model that was fantastic and then replace it with an updated model that was shit. Plextor, at least, had some consistency among their products.

HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON

HiVolt

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I had a plextor CDRW, I believe it was a 16x but at that time they came down in price... I started with a cheap 2x IDE mitsumi or something, boy that was a piece of crap. I quickly spent some real money on a Yamaha 6x SCSI, and that lasted me for many years, until I just wanted something faster... By then the IDE drives buffer underrun protection was pretty well developed and SCSI wasn't really needed.

My first DVD-R was a Pioneer 4x, and I had several models during the next 5-6 years, until I finally ditched IDE all together and everything was SATA since. I think what I have is a LG burner now and i dont really know its specs lol, because it cost like $30.

EUS
Kill cancer
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join:2002-09-10
canada

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My first cd writer was a Plextor, a present from the wifey.
Looking back, (like all computer tech), I can't believe how expensive and slow it was. 2 or 4x write cannot remember.
At the time it was fantastic, didn't get one coaster burning anything either.

urbanriot
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join:2004-10-18
Canada

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said by Gone:

Plextor were never bad drives, they just weren't anywhere near as good as they premiums demanded made them out to be, including in the DVD-R era.

They were definitely as good as the premiums demanded for the people that utilized the premium reasons for buying them. They weren't necessary for you, thus too high for what you need.

I wouldn't have spent $89 on a drive when there were $35 alternatives if the money wasn't worth it.

Gone
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join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

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said by urbanriot:

They were definitely as good as the premiums demanded for the people that utilized the premium reasons for buying them. They weren't necessary for you, thus too high for what you need.

I wouldn't have spent $89 on a drive when there were $35 alternatives if the money wasn't worth it.

Um, back in the days I'm talking about, no DVD burners were $35, not even the piece of shit drives I alluded to. We're talking 2003-2005ish. $89 was a cheap drive back then.

And I stand behind my statements about Plextor and the fact that I don't believe that any of the "features" of those drives was any better than a well-researched lower cost alternative, particularly since I actually did of disc copying in those days and knew what I was dealing with chewed up discs and farting around with bitsetting, overburning and all sorts of other fun things that most people never knew about. My choice, as was the choice of many other people in the know, was Pioneer. I can't remember if it was the DVR-103 or 104, but it was one of them and I'm going back ten years or so to remember the exact model. If you found a way to justify the higher cost of a Plextor drive back in the early 2000s, good for you. I still think you paid too much money and nothing you or anyone else can say to me will convince me of anything different.

elwoodblues
Elwood Blues
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join:2006-08-30
Somewhere in

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Early plextors were Fibe, and yes pioneer was the standard for dvd-rw, till they started focusing on br devices and outsourced the dvd units.

Hivolt my first plextors had caddies!!

Gone
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join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

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said by elwoodblues:

pioneer was the standard for dvd-rw, till they started focusing on br devices and outsourced the dvd units.

Bingo. Pioneer DVD burners haven't been anything special for the last few years, but at this point DVD burners are commodity devices that are all pretty much the same thing anyway.

urbanriot
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join:2004-10-18
Canada

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Even their in-house BD-R drives have been disappointing, my Pioneer BD-R drive doesn't have a stellar history with Verbatim branded discs and the parity errors are much higher than with my LG's.
vue666 (banned)
Let's make Canchat better!!!
join:2007-12-07

vue666 (banned)

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My first DVD burner was a Pioneer DVR-105 4x that only burnt DVR-R & DVD-RW media. I paid $199.00 for it at Futureshop on sale. I still have it installed in one of my Win 7 computers and do use it occasionally. The computer also has an ASUS sata DVD burner and a LG usb burner installed...