[paranoia] Cyberdrive

[Monty]

> First of all, I'm not exactly happy with recommendations noone has asked
> for. Secondly, I own one myself and like add my comments:

To be fair, there have been many requests in the past.  He simply didn;t
respond to any directly.

> - it noisy as in NOISE
> - it is not 100% jitter free
> - when things get rough (scratched cds) the performance detereorates
> rapidly.
> 
> I, too, bought this drive because it was recommended by c't magazine,
> usually a very reliable source for product info. First of all, there were
> 3 Cyberdrive models (40x, 44x, 48x), the Plextor UltraPlex 40x and a
> couple of others. The 40x and 48x drives seem to be identical except for
> the speed. The 44x model is a very different beast. It was the 44x that
> performed best of all in this test. The UltraPlex was only rated average,
> mostly because of its performance ripping scratched CDs, since that was
> what the test focused on.

The problem with Cyberdrive is that they relabel several different drive makes
and models, and you can't generally be sure what you're getting in the box;
they're a 'cheapest from Taiwan this week' kind of brand. Historically,
Cyberdrive uses NEC OEM drives, which I do *not* recommend for DAE (they're
perhaps the worst there is).  Not all Cyberdrives are NECs, and not all are the
flaky NECs, but you just never know until you open the box.

I can certainly believe that the drive c't tested was excellent, and that the
first author managed to purchase one of these same drives.  Many cheap drives
*do* work fantastically well at DAE, it's just a bit of a crap shoot.

Monty

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