CD Burner Information

If you'd just as soon perform open-heart surgery on yourself as crack open your computer case or hook up an external drive, some consumer electronics companies (chief among them Pioneer and Philips) manufacture standalone CD-R and CD-RW consoles that attach to your stereo system. While by all accounts these units produce high-quality audio CDs, they're designed to accept input from stereo components (e.g. turntables, cassette decks or other CD players) and not from PCs. If you have a special need, such as converting a massive library of vinyl albums into CD format, a standalone CD-RW recorder may be a good investment.

DVD burners now cost only $10 or $20 more than CD burners, and they are just as easy to install. See our report on DVD burners for both internal and external DVD burners.

For help in deciding whether a CD or DVD burner is the best choice for your needs, check out these articles:

PC World: "Burning Questions, Good-bye CD-RW, Hello DVD"

CNet.com: "To CD or not to CD: are CD-RW drives obsolete?"

Manufacturers websites:

Lite-On or

Philips/Lite-On

Sony

Memorex