detail information

First things first as we check out the contents of the PleXCombo PX-320A package. In the box Plextor send to us we find the following things:

• The PleXCombo 20/10/40-12A drive itself
• Quick installation guide
• Warranty RMA procedure manual
• IDE 40-pins flatcable
• Audio cables
• Mounting screws
• One extra jumper cap
• Emergency eject pin
• Nero Burning Rom 5 disc containing;
  • Ahead's Nero Burning Rom
  • Ahead's NeroMix
  • Ahead's InCD
• CyberLink PowerDVD XP v4.0 disc
• PlexTools v1.13 disc including PleXCombo manual
• One blank 20x 650MB Plextor CD-R
  (manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemicals*)
• One blank 4x-10x 650MB Plextor CD-RW
  (manufactured by unknown company*)

A very nice and complete package as we see it. Like said many times before we love Nero Burning Rom and we were glad to see that Plextor Europe also ships this software with their drives. Please note however that Plextor America ships 'Easy CD Creator' with their drives.

Like we saw with the Yamaha CRW3200E drive, Plextor has also included an extra jumper cap in case you misplace the one on the drive itself. But Plextor even goes one step further and has included an emergency eject pin. Almost all drives have a little hole on the front of the drive with which, by inserting a small pin, you can open the drive-tray in case of an emergency. Normally you would have to use a paperclip or similar but now you can use the supplied pin.

The manual of the PleXCombo can be found on the PlexTools disc and is very complete and in many different languages. Plextor has included a printed quick installation guide and a printed manual on how you should proceed when you have problems with your drive. For Europe, The Middle-East and Africa Plextor Europe offers a two year warranty on the PleXCombo drive as they do for all their new writer models.

The Drive:

On the front of the PleXCombo drive we find the PleXCombo logo, the supported speeds (20/10/40-12A), the 'BPRec' (BURN-Proof Recording) logo and the 'High Speed CD ReWriteable' logo. Besides that we have the usual headphone jack, a volume control, disc/busy LED's and of course an eject-button. The 'Disc' LED shines green when a CD is loaded, yellow when a CD is being read and orange when it's writing to a CD. The CD blinks orange at different speeds depending on the current (re-)write speed. As you can see in the picture above the PleXCombo PX-320A has a black tray instead of a grey one.

One the back of the drive we find the usual IDE and power connectors, the MASTER/SLAVE jumpers and the SPDIF (analog/digital) output connectors. Besides the usual MASTER/SLAVE jumper setting we can also see a jumper to set the drive to MultiWord DMA mode. The drive normally operates in UDMA33 mode (recommended).

The Software:

As briefly mentioned when we listed the package contents, this Plextor combo drive includes some great software. First of all we have Nero Burning Rom which doesn't really need an introduction. Nero Burning Rom, by many people, is considered to be one of the best software packages around when it comes to your burning needs.

Plextor PlexTools is another well known program and is delivered with European Plextor CD-writers. The program has come a long way since its first introduction and now offers some advanced features. Below a screenshot of PlexTools version 1.13, delivered with the PleXCombo drive:

With PlexTools you can perform various functions with your Plextor drive like copying a disc, Digital Audio Extraction, erase CD-RW discs, etc. PlexTools also has an audio player (which also supports CD-Text) and options to set the advanced features of your Plextor drive:

If you look closely you can see that PlexTools now also has an option 'Hide CD-R Media' just as CloneCD has. In the screenshot above this option has been greyed out because it hadn't been fully implemented yet in version 1.13. The latest PlexTools version 1.14 does fully support this option. Here's another screenshot of PlexTools 'in action' using the CD Copy function:

Besides burn software Plextor has also included a copy of CyberLink's PowerDVD XP v4.0 so you can watch your favourite DVD movies with the PleXCombo. PowerDVD XP is a complete software package for viewing your DVD movies on your computer and besides that, it looks great:

On the next page we'll take a look at the features the PleXCombo PX-320A...