detail information

First things first as we check out the contents of the European Plextor PX-S2410TU retail package. In the box Plextor Europe send to us we can find the following things:

• The Plextor PX-S2410TU drive itself
• Quick installation guide
• Warranty RMA procedure manual
• USB 2.0 connection cable
• External 9V power adapter
• Emergency eject pin
• Nero Burning Rom 5.5 disc containing;
  • Ahead's Nero Burning Rom
  • Ahead's NeroMediaPlayer
  • Ahead's InCD
• PlexTools v1.17 disc including 16-language
  manual and USB 2.0 driver for Windows 98SE
• One blank 48X 700MB Plextor CD-R
  (manufactured by Taiyo Yuden*)
• One blank 10X 650MB Plextor CD-RW
  (manufactured by Ricoh*)

As always the Plextor package includes everything you need to get started burning right away. The package of course does not include any screws or flatcables since the drive is an external model with its own case, which by the way, is simply beautiful to look at. Because of the silver and black colours this drive certainly won't look bad attached to your home computer or laptop.

The manual of the Plextor drive 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 drive as they do for all their new writer models.

Installation:

The Plextor PX-S2410TU drive uses the USB 2.0 standard so your computer has to have support for this. Most new motherboards have USB 2.0 ports but many older motherboard do not have this support. Since our motherboard is brand new it has these onboard USB 2.0 ports but if you have an older computer you'll have to install a PCI USB 2.0 card. Luckily these cards aren't very expensive.

The external Plextor drive was attached via the USB cable that was delivered with it. Its power supply comes from the 9V power adapter. When Windows XP is running and the drive is turned on via the switch on the side, it's automatically recognized and ready for use. You don't need additional software to use the drive (well at least not under Windows XP since this operating system already supports USB 2.0). There's no need to set the drive to DMA mode or anything. Just hit the switch and you're good to go.

The Drive:

On the top of the Plextor PX-S2410TU drive We can see the black Plextor and PlexWriter logo including the supported read and write speeds (24/10/24). On the front of the drive we find the 'High Speed CD ReWriteable' logo, a busy/write LED and of course an eject-button. On the side of the drive we can find the on/off switch, a headphone jack and a volume control. On the back of drive we find the power and USB connections.

The Software:

As briefly mentioned when we listed the package contents, this European Plextor drive includes Nero Burning Rom v5.5 which doesn't need an introduction anymore. Nero Burning Rom, by many people, is considered to be one of the best software packages around when it comes to your CD and DVD burning needs.

Of course Ahead's InCD is also located on the Nero 5.5 CD-ROM. InCD is Ahead's packet writing software to use with your CD and DVD ReWriteable discs. With this software you can format a CD-RW or DVD±RW disc and use it as a large floppy disc. InCD also supports the 'Mount Rainier' (CD-MRW) format which we'll get back to later in our review.

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 such as 'DAE Error Recovery' and advanced settings to control your Plextor drive with. The latest PlexTools version (1.17) now also offers the possibility to burn your own data compilations (audio was already possible in previous versions):

For more information on some of the advanced features of Plextor's PlexTools please read our small review on it.