Dont buy HP burners!........my opinion

[1Old Fart]

I have a HP 8250i 4x4x32 burner that I bought new, yet on it there is no ID of the model. Its laser is getting a little lazy as it wont identify my win ME and 2000 during boot!, as well as in the OS. {I had to reinstall win 2k over my home network}
It still burns fine but its not as should be and as I've only burned maybe 25 - 30 disks its definately not worn out.
Now I have been sent 4 yes 4 burners { 1 to my old address!!! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif } and all are the 4x4x24 model which has different firmware, which are all recognised in the bios and OS as generic 4x4x24 IDE burners and therefore Clone cd and NTI cdmaker will not see them as HP burners and wont use all its capabilities http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif whereas my original 4x4x32 {which i'm not letting go of yet} is recognised in bios and OS as HP 4x4x32 8200 plus and therefore Clone cd and NTI cdmaker will use all its attributes. I have yet to make a coaster with my original writer even now, but feel it should work as bought.

had to vent, any other warranty horror stories?
So far 12 friggin phone calls, $ 20 in long distance calls and 3 trips to UPS to pick up packages and 3 to sent back crappy/ wrong burners http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif NEXT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jokostel]

sorry for the tough luck buddy http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

myself, ive had fairly good luck so far with my creative 8432... with the samsung 208b firmware on her so i can use clone cd...


have never had an hp burner...

hope it all works out http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

jokostel

[msterzer]

I had a HP 8250 and burned a lot of coasters. I tried every kind of software I could buy. It did fine as long as I was burning music or making backups of my software. It screwed up trying to backup Playstation games. I bought a TDK VeloCD. It uses Nero Burning Rom. It has burn proof technology. I have yet to burn a coaster, even Playstation games. As far as I am concerned the TDK is the ultimate burner. I have not tried the Plextor. It is supposed to be as good if not better. EZ CD creator is **** poor. Clone CD and Nero Burning Rom are the best as far as I am concerned. Hope this helps you.

[struggles]

Adaptec Platinum aint bad........oh yeah, and Plextor rules!

[Richard_Cranium72]

I've had a 8250i, 9150i and two 8220e units(Plus a Hi-Val 4x4x24, good unit).

The first one was a 8250i "Open Box" unit that some moron had ripped the drive tray out of.

One call to HP had me a new unit Air Expressed to my door with a UPS call tag to place on the old drive.

To date the only coasters I've burned have been my fault.

Sorry your experience has not been so good.

DrVette

[codybear]

I too have had many HP burners and have only good things to say about them. I have a plextor 12x sitting on my floor that was going to replace my 10x 9310i but I have had NO problems with it so I will stick with my HP and sell the plextor instead.

[thekingofpain]

I have a HP 9100 ive had for 2 years, never a problem with it---I also have 2 Plextor 12x's that im very happy with---I think the software used has a great importance...

[daveleau]

I currently have two HP burners that are working great (still). I have a 4/4/24 8250i and a 2/2/16(?) 7200i. While I am not proud of their speed, they have been durable. My 8250i has been used ALOT. I backed up my 60GB ftp server with it and it still plugs along like it did when I got it.

Sorry you are having problems.

Dave

[MTAtech]

I've bought lots of HP burners for a business and they are extremely reliable from my experience.

Please don't condemn the library because you got one bad book.

[bobcat]

I have gone through 2 HP burners in 3 years. One can still read regular CDs but nothing else. The other, the rom fried out completly. I'm not impressed with them.

[This message has been edited by bobcat (edited 07-24-2001).]

[tarpat1]

I agree with MTAtech, I have had considerable luck with HP burners and have recommended them to everyone I know. I have never had any problem with any of them.

[This message has been edited by tarpat1 (edited 07-24-2001).]

[jad1097]

My hp burner works flawlessly, 9300 series.

[Ritalin Kid]

I've had my 12x10x32 LiteOn CDRW since about April and have been using Roxio EZ CD Creator 5 Platinum with no problems whatsoever.. I've burned a little more than 100 CD's so far data and songs.. if I use Sound Stream I can burn a 80 min CD packed in about 7 mins..

[Rhino302]

Had an 8000 HP burner for a year and a half, never made a coaster, reads everythign.

[Beemer]

I have the HP 9350i which works flawlessly in Win98se. As soon as I loaded WinY2K, I noticed a problem with the burner being recognized properly. The Promise ULTRA ATA 100 SCSI/RAID drivers screwed things up a bit and listed my CD-ROM and HP burner as SCSI devices. i tried slowing down the data transfer rate in the BIOS to PIO MODE 3 from the 4, to no avale.

I changed my VIA Bus Master IDE channels into Primary and Secondary channels and then got rid of the software that came with the burner. I went to the Adapatec Easy CD Creator 4. Even the HP updates for the installed HP software didn't work with WinY2K.

Worked out great!

Cheers!

[This message has been edited by Beemer (edited 07-24-2001).]

[De Joker]

I had the same burner, never had a problem with it. Only 2 coasters from maybe 100+ burns, and those where not caused by the writer. Also only had 2 cdr's that caused read problems, but those were cheap cdr's.

Mine was 4x4x24 (model 8250i). Last week i traded it with a friend of mine for his 8250i, because i recently found some information that there are 2 different versions of the 8250i. One is recognised as 4x4x24 while the other as 8200+.

There also different from the outside. As it turns out the other version with the 4x4x32 is actualy a 9100i or a 9300i. So i changed the firmware to that of the 9100i, and can now burn cd's at 8x instead of 4x. Another plus is that the 4x4x32 version can read/write raw, while the 4x4x24 can't.

The info can be found at the clone cd website.

[crazyray]

I rhink it might be pertinent to point out that it appears that HP is buying burners from multiple sources. My 9100i appears to be a Sony. I would expect some variance in performance based on manufacturer.

The only burner I've had trouble with was a Ricoh. I understand the frustration this can cause. I will never by another Ricoh.

[Cody]

I have a PlexWriter 8/4/32 and I LOVE IT! on my PIII800 Coppermine w/ 512MB PC133 RAM, I barely ever make a coaster. I use cdrecord in SuSE and Nero or Adaptec in Windows 2000 (do most of my writing in Linux though).

I would reccommend it to anyone... never even a problem with it, about a year old now .

[sharder8]

I have a Yamaha 8X4X24 that has burned over 300 using Nero without a problem. My 11y.o. has an HP 8X4X32 that has done GREAT for the last year, but I'm going to put a copy of my Nero on her machine later this week.

I also agree with MTAtech, Please don't condemn the library because you got one bad book

After all, they aren't like Compaq's! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

Harder