Following a small technical issue that I experienced, no doubt really only compatibility between the DVD Writer unit and the USB external enclosure I attempted to fit it in to
( article 151108 ), I did in the end get hold of a pukka external USB LightScribe DVD Writer.

The one I chose, a - SAMSUNG Super-Writemaster SE-S224.
 

Impressive... Straight out of the box and working a treat...

In the retail pack: drive, power adapter, two mains leads (3 pin UK and 2 pin Europe), stand, USB a-b cable, software / guide.

The spec: just about any disc to be honest (although not Blueray of course) at most notably 22x DVD±R write/16x read, providing the USB SpeedPlus driver is installed (within the bundled software) and providing your PC is man enough no doubt!

I thought I would give it a go attached to a not so new notebook running with an upgrade to Vista. The spec on the box suggested Pentium4/2.8GHz and above was desirable, well let's see how a Celeron M 1.6GHz gets on then.

Loaded the Nero Express 7, LightScribe applications etc., and connected up. Well so far so good. Burned a LightScribe CD with an image to test, then ejected the disc, flipped it over and shut the draw. The LightScribe application found the disc OK. Designed a test label OK then clicked print. Impressive. Straight out of the box and working a treat...

I have to say I was more than pleased that this time it worked really well.

To give it a real test, I hooked the Samsung SE-S224 up to my desktop pc, and then "shared" the drive to make it available to other pc's on our network. I could see the drive across the network via a mapped drive OK and all looked fine. Well I then hit the limitation I was half expecting straightaway, but you have to try these things. The LightScribe Control application won't work with a drive not directly connected to the same pc. Shame.

Mind you I see now that I'm looking, LaCie actually supply some software with their LightScribe drives that is called "remote burn" for burning just like I've attempted across the network. Looks like I'll be trying that soon then...

 

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