External DVD Burner/Ram/Hard Drive

[Jackieann]

After driving myself crazy about when to buy, I am about to order a 20" i-mac....switching from a Dell. I was willing to wait until June...but don't want to wait until October!! I burn a lot of cd's/dvd's and am used to having two disk drives. I am considering buying an external burner but am unsure what kind would be best. The Apple Store sells only LaCie's but the reviews on them are not too good. The plus is that they ship with Toast. Any advice about what other brands are reliable??? How about Sony? Will they all work with the OS platform...or do they need to specify they will work with a mac??? If I bought Toast, then could I use any burner?? Or...will I be happy with just the one drive??? Also, I am used to more ram and a bigger hard drive. How easy is it to add more ram? Can I do it myself? Do I need a bigger hard drive? I can get an educational discount from the Apple Store but the price is still more (because of tax and no rebate) than buying from somewhere else like MacMall. But, buying from other sites eliminates the possibility of upgrading the ram and hd. I use my computer a lot but mainly for word processing, web searching, and photo editing. I don't play games...so I don't know if I need more ram. Any advice would be appreciated. Sorry to have so many questions in one post. I have really learned a lot from this forum. Thanks.

 

[wichtb01]

Seagate makes excellent external hard drives, check out some reviews. LiteOn is a company to look into for an external DVD burner. In the past, according to what I had read, they have made external burners for Sony which they (Sony) put their casing on. I personally own and have owned for nearly two years a Seagate external hard drive and a LiteOn external DVD burner. I read a lot of reviews at numerous websites before buying both. You can do the same.