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I used to recommend USB external devices to people who I felt weren't competent enough to install a simple device internally. But after some thought, it's only a couple extra steps more of plugging to do. External devices are great for certain situations, but it has been my experience that you pay extra for a below-par performance device a lot of the time. But people who are not as savvy with internal hardware recommend external devices to death, and quite honestly harp on the fact that it's the next biggest thing, at the same time they're overlooking the performances and cost. That's my opinion on that.
Let's compare the LG GSA-4163B with any USB external burner.
Price:
Performance:
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I think !mitationRust makes some excellent points.
Sure I have external devices. I use them for trouble shooting, one-offs and the like. I tend to look on them as part of my support toolkit?
Sometimes I would recommend them to someone else, but that would be in those situations where they are sharing the device intermittently between a number of devices. tape streamers for backups used to the favourite :D Maybe DVD drives fall into that now, if you have older kit? or, if you have several machines but only use one at a time then an ADSL modem?
Personally, I tend to favour internal devices most of the time.
:)
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i still prefer the "external" one because you can use it anywhere... not only to your machine
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Originally posted here by Jeckgo
i still prefer the "external" one because you can use it anywhere... not only to your machine
Internal devices can also be moved from one computer to another one. It just requires a bit more technical knowledge. Normally, it shouldn't be that much of a problem to remove a DVD-writer from one PC to another, in case you want to upgrade your hardware.
That you can use it everywhere isn't completely true for USB-based DVD-writers. They still come with some drivers but also with some software that should help you to burn a DVD. Often Nero or Roxio stuff... DVD players might be fully plug-and-play by now, though. At least on Windows XP or better.
And again, from personal experience I know that all those devices will eat up quite a bit of bandwidth. In my case, I have a printer, a TV card, my PDA, my mouse, a joystick, my keyboard, my graphic tablet and a Peerless harddisk that allows me to swap external disks of 20 GB each. I also have a few small flash memory pens, a flash card reader, and a DVD-recorder and CD-recorder on USB. I must have a ZIP drive somewhere too. And believe me, if I connect all these devices, my computer will start to complain to me about not having enough bandwidth.
Printing while burning a DVD? Or watching TV while burning a DVD? Impossible if everything is connected to the USB port. That's why I bought an internal DVD-rewriter, simply because that way my USB devices have more bandwidth. If it was possible, I would have loved to have my printer connected to the old-fashioned printer port too and my mouse to the serial port. USB does have a few limitations once you have quite a few USB devices.
