Price Guide, July 2006: Storage

Optical Storage

We'll wrap up this storage guide with the DVDR solutions available. There aren't any HD-DVD or Blu-Ray optical drives showing up in our RTPE just yet. As soon as they become more readily available, you'll see them listed here. We are aware of exactly one vendor currently offering a Blu-Ray drive, TigerDirect, and the price of roughly $1000 for the Pioneer BDR-101A is far more than we are willing to consider recommending. Instead, we suggest you sit tight and wait things out to find out which standard emerges victorious; hopefully, prices will also become more reasonable while you wait.

Now let's take a look at the DVDR drives. There are quite a few drives that are listed here, making a solid recommendation slightly difficult as there are many drives that work very well. DVD burners have become a commodity item, so for most people the differences between manufacturers are very small. That being the case, we generally recommend going with the best price you can find. Please don't hold it against us if we don't specifically suggest one of your favorites.


First, there's the ever-so-popular NEC 16X ND-3550A [RTPE: ND-3550A] on sale for about $36 shipped. There is also the Pioneer 16X DVR-111D [RTPE: DVR-111D] which is going for about $37 shipped. If you want a few extras, the BenQ 16X DW1655 [RTPE: DW1655] features LightScribe technology. At the moment, this drive is going for about $42 shipped.

Again, there are many popular choices that warrant mention, and we've tried to point just a few of them out. And once again, that wraps up our Storage Price Guide. Thanks for reading, and as always we are open to suggestions on how to make these guides more useful to you, our readers.