powerbook superdrive

[Ipaqman]

hey,

what are the cons of buying a powerbook g4 with the superdrive?
ipaqman

 

[Manimac]

Costs more and has lower speed ratings if you are just working with CD's.

 

[yoda13]

Plus, the hard drives are smaller are powerbooks, if you work with large quanitities of video at one time. Also the Superdrives themselves are slower on Powerbooks then they are on desktops.

 

[coolbreeze]

I agree with the above posters. If you don't plan on burning DVD's (more than maybe 1 every couple of months) then downgrade the superdrive to combo. Besides, it's like $200 cheaper and burns faster to boot!

 

[PaisanoMan]

Originally posted by coolbreeze
I agree with the above posters. If you don't plan on burning DVD's (more than maybe 1 every couple of months) then downgrade the superdrive to combo. Besides, it's like $200 cheaper and burns faster to boot!

Very true. On the other hand, the SuperDrive is useful for burning DVDs with very large files -- I use it for creating DVDs of motion graphics and for duplicating large sets of data. (Fortunately, the buffer underrun protection lets you keep working while it burns.)

If you're not going to be giving that kind of large data to other people (say, backups of large files), you can get a FireWire drive instead. I made one out of an old 60 GB disk, and it's extremely fast for backups and offline storage.

If all else fails, it's very cool to have. That's not a good reason to buy anything, though.

 

[riwanami]

I agree that a lot of people would be very happy with the faster Combo Drive. But being able to back your HD up on several DVD-Rs instead of dozens of CDs can make sense especially for those with large files.

Even though the drive may be slower, for those who need to back up often, it probably saves more time by using less number of discs with the Super Drive.