Tech Buzz 08/04

Feel the Burn

DVD-burner technology is growing up and working itself into the mainstream of business hardware. Early buyers of DVD recorders had to carefully consider which competing standard to choose. That's no longer an issue with the latest crop of drives that are turning the standards war into a standards truce. They burn DVD-R/RW as well as DVD+R/RW and CDs. No more puzzling over different DVD media. Multiformat drives cost a bit more than single-format drives, but the flexibility can be worth it.

In terms of storage space, double-layer (DL) DVD technology is the latest and greatest. Sony was first out of the blocks with drives that can burn up to 8.5GB on a single disk using the DVD+R standard. That's almost double the capacity of regular DVD disks. At $199 for the internal model (DRU-700A) or $299 for the external model (DRX-700UL), they're not cheap. But their high capacity makes them more useful to businesses looking for a new data backup method. Expect a DVD-R version to be out soon.