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Plextor Europe has today officially announced their latest CD-writer, the Plextor Premium, which we already briefly mentioned during our CeBIT coverage. The Plextor Premium drive will support 52x writing and reading speeds and besides that it will also support 32x re-writing:
Optimum performance, unique features and super-fast '“ these are just a few of the qualities of the latest Plextor CD-ReWriter. The brand new PlexWriter Premium reads and writes disks at a speed of 52x, and rewrites at a top speed of 32x. The drive has an access time of less than 65 ms, an extensive 8MB buffer, and just like its predecessors, is equipped with the Buffer Underrun Proof technology to avoid this kind of error.
The unique extra features that further increase ease of use and quality are really impressive. With the 'GigaRec" function, you can store up to 1.2 GB of data on a standard 99 minute CD (or up to 1 GB on an 80 minute CD), an increase in capacity of over 40%, which will be particularly appreciated by music lovers. With its 'SecuRec" hardware password protection, you can protect all your data. Ideal for making and storing master copies of important data. To extend the working life of the drive and run the whole process really quietly, you can use 'Silent Mode" to set the access times, read and write speed and the eject time yourself. A 'Q-Check" or quality control (C1/C2 error test, FE/TE test and Beta/Jitter test) before and after the burning process provides you with the necessary information about the quality of your CD.
The Plextor Premium drive will be available in both an internal and external (USB 2.0) version. The drive can be purchased this May for a recommended retail price of €119 (ex. VAT) for the internal drive and €199 (ex. VAT) for the external drive.
You're of course welcome to discuss this new Plextor drive in our Plextor Forum!
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From the cebit announcement, it seems they increase the data capacity by 40%, i.e. within the red/orange book standard for jitter - so it should be able to be read in other drives. However, this is assuming the drive writes with zero jitter and will of course reduce the effective error correction by 40%. Nice idea though.
The press release mention increase of data storage only. Does anyone know if you can burn a long (time) music cd? And if so will it then be playable on a standalone cd player? 2½ hours on a music cd would be VERY nice.
The CD's will be readable in any player at cost of read speed. The more data you squeeze in the less speed you'll get when retrieving it out from the CD.
>> Well thats a stupid question of course
>> we are buying plextor drives - if you
>> know anything about quality then you
>> would understand why
Well, probably because you'd pay any price to see the name "plextor" on your drive, regardless whether it's rebadged (such as their dvd writer) or not
A typical syndrom of plextor-menia is that drives are judged even before they are released, not to speak about being reviewed...
EDIT mh...IE 6 crashes and Opera doesn't follow the threads [edited by alexnoe on 15.04.2003 18:48]
It is a ridiculous question because as per the prior reply, anyone who cares about quality recordings, reliability, and a 2yr warranty for a rather insignificant hike in purchase price buys plextor. Anyone who follows forums such as this knows plextor is renowned for quality.
The only bad thing about plextor drives till now is their inability to cope with copying games as well as poorer build/write quality/music extraction capability lite-ons.
So, one brownie point for the competition, many brownie points for plextor.
When someone such as you continually knocks one make you wonder if you work for the competition, weer unlucky to have a duff unit or bad experience (no one or nothing is perfect), or just dont follow the forum your on.
Ice'y
It's pretty simple: I never trust any drive before seeing or doing tests with it.
Drives are just too expensive to buy them because of a manufacturer's reputation, especially this very one.
BTW, are only Plextor fanatics unable to read? If (some of) you would look over that low horizon, you would see that I carefully look for every fault I can find in any drive, regardless whether it's LiteOn, LG, Asus, Plextor, Pioneer, Toshiba, or whatever.
It's just Plextor users who are annoyed by that! Users of other drives can accept that there are obviously more or less faults in the drives....only (some) Plextor users can't. [edited by alexnoe on 17.04.2003 10:22]
Thanks, Dennis ! It's a really good news ! 
It kinda felt like I should check the Plextor site today 
Q
Happy Birthday to you motor11 
r_saotome thank you for your reaction in the news section. 
Daemonicus just logged in, Good to see you back!