Review on Plextor PX-716UF - Dual Layer DVDRW Drive - Hi-Speed USB/IEEE 1394 (FireWire) (PX-716UF/SW) by Gervan Mauldin

I've been using this CD for about three months and absolutely love it. I run it all day, every day, and it's never glitched in the slightest. I've used it with +R, -R, and DL media and have never burned coasters; not even. The firmware update gives me 6x write speeds on 4x DL media with no noticeable quality loss. I connect via firewire and get incredible data transfer speeds. I use it with Norton Ghost for perfect Ghost Image system backups with no issues; I use Nero for almost everything else. HERE'S WHY IT WORKS FOR ME: I've known Roxio for almost a decade and have tried their software multiple times. I have to give credit to Roxio for their consistency. For at least ten years, they've been producing some of the worst, bloated, stupid, and buggy software I've ever come across. They seem to have learned absolutely nothing in ten years, as evidenced by the poor bastards who left negative reviews and comments here after installing broken Roxio software. I find it completely incomprehensible that Plextor chose to partner with Roxio as it is very similar to how Mercedes partnered with Yugo. WHY? Plextor, do you have a death wish? Do you find market success unattractive and prefer humiliation and failure? Why do you treat your customers like this? Likewise, I have known Memorex for over thirty years and am impressed by them as well. If you want your audio cassette to get stuck in your car and the tape heads to get dirty, break or have a lousy sound right away, choose a Memorex audio cassette. For this reason I have never tried their computer media as I have had such consistently bad experiences with their audio and video cassettes. It's the same when I installed all the software that Plextor comes with and used bad recording media. I can't think of a more reliable way to fix a broken computer than installing the Roxio software and using the Memorex media (Verbatim has always worked well for me, as have Maxell and Sony). I installed the included Plextools software and found it stable and trouble-free, but I didn't have to use it often as Nero meets most of my disc burning software needs with stability, ease of use, and efficiency. If you already have the Nero software on your computer, the price of this disc has just increased by $80 if you decide to purchase the current version of Nero's Ultra Edition. Try the included Plextools software first, if you don't already have Nero it might help. Nero may not be the only solution; other recording packages may also work well, but most importantly, DO NOT INSTALL THE BUNDLED ROXIO SOFTWARE. I encourage potential buyers to read previous reviews as I agree with most of the points made by these users.