Help me choose an external DVD burner for laptop

[Islandvic]

I would like to buy an external dvd burner for my dell laptop.

The laptop is a 4 year old Inspiron that still works well.
The specs on the laptop as follows: It has 1GB ram, Windoze XP Pro, new high speed 80gb hard drive, 32mb video card, 2 hi-speed USB and 1 firewire port and the old school P4 2.2ghz chip.

I would like to get into an external DVD burner. Would my laptop be able to support one with its specs?

I found these on newegg and tiger direct, your thoughts and experience please!

If you can suggest alternatives to these, let me know, thanks!

HP DVD burner $63

Phillips DVD Burner $60

Plextor DVD burner $120

 

[MGregoir]

Is it something that you are going to be bringing with you to burn or leaving it sitting on your desk?

Certain ones you can power off the USB on your laptop, but they draw juice from your battery when portable, others require power adaptors. I have seen Samsung externals go for $60-ish Canadian so there should be some out there. Haven't heard anything bad about them.

Read lots of reviews.

Your laptop should be able to run it fine. Plextor is supposed to be the top dog for burning hardware but the price/performance ratio is way off. LG makes one that is less expensive than the Plextor, compact and powered off USB port.

The drive itself in most HP ones I have seen is made by LG, Sony/NEC make their own drives, I do not know if Philips still makes theirs in house, they may possibly be LGs as well. Hitachi, LG and Philips have a lot of joint venture business.

 

[MONKEYMAN]

I have a Phillips one I got from Tiger Direct recently that looks like the New Egg one. So far, no problems. I have not burned many CD's or DVD's. It came with Nero 7 Essentials. After installing it updated some firmware. I am not real proficient with Nero, but compared to the buggy Roxio that came on my Dell (that rarely worked right), it seems to be OK. The burner seems to be fine. DVD's are looking better and sound quality is better compared to the old DVD internal unit I have a my Dell 2400. After the second install of Nero I unchecked making it the default for everything. It was messing with Power DVD program or other programs that I regularly use.

 

[Islandvic]

This will be a semi-permanent unit. If I take it with me, it will be plugged into an outlet.

More input is welcome.

Thanks!

 

[DmanWho]

I like our HP DVD 840, w/LightScribe. It looks just like the one you linked to. Haven't experienced any problems.
Having that LightScribe feature is really great.

 

[Islandvic]

I went with the HP burner. It's a larger than I thought but works great.

I have been using Maxell DVD's and not one coaster yet!

 

[Quattro Pete]

I have an older version of that Plextor that you linked (also hooked up to a 5-yr-old Dell laptop), and all I can say is - save your money and buy something else. That Plextor is buggy. It burns CDs OK, but it struggles on many DVDs. Maybe there is just something wrong with mine, but I'm not spending money on another Plextor. Next time I'm going with LiteOn, HP, or LG.