detail information

First things first as we check out the contents of the TEAC CD-W540E package. In the box TEAC send to us we find the following things:

• The recorder
• Manual (including warranty card)
• IDE 40-pins flatcable
• Audio cables
• Mounting screws
• TEAC 'For Your Information' disc v5.0 containing:
  • Information on TEAC products
  • Various manuals
  • TEAC product specifications
  • Various drivers
  • TEAC drive firmware's
  • Applications;
    • TEAC CD-player
    • Virtual CD 4 demo (to emulate CD-drives)
    • Speed utility for 32x and 40x TEAC CD-ROMs
    • Feurio! v1.63 demo (English/Italian) / v1.64 demo (German)
    • Vendotto Manager v1.2 (German and English)
  • Pictures of TEAC products
  • Screensavers
• Ahead's Nero Burning Rom;
  • Nero Burning Rom v5.5
  • NeroMediaPlayer
  • InCD / Packet-Writing
  • UDF reader
• One blank 40x 700MB Mitsui CD-R (manufactured by Mitsui)
• One blank 10x 650MB TEAC CD-RW (manufactured by Mitsubishi)

So as you can see a very complete package and, as we see it, a true example for other manufacturers of CD-RW drives. The box even included a voucher with which you can order a free 12x CD-RW disc since the drive is currently shipped with 10x media because 12x CD-RW discs aren't widely available yet. And besides the very complete package you get a two year warranty on your drive (only available in Europe)... Sounds great doesn't it?

Software:

We were glad to see that TEAC ships Nero Burning Rom with their drives since it's simply our personal favourite. Please do note however, that 'Easy CD Creator' is shipped with the drive in America. Besides the OEM version of Nero Burning Rom we find some other handy software on the TEAC 'For Your Information' disc:

• TEAC CD-player:
  The TEAC CD-player supports all the functions of an audio player including displaying CD-text.
  
  
• Virtual CD 4 demo:
  With Virtual CD you can compress the complete contents of a disc to your hard drive. By doing this you will have faster access to your data and you don't have swap your discs anymore. Besides that it will be handy for notebooks to spare the batteries. Virtual CD can emulate up to 22 discs and supports Windows 98/ME/NT4/2000/XP.
  
  
• Speed utility for 32x and 40x TEAC CD-ROMs:
  The speed utilities are an expansion utility exclusively for use with certain TEAC CD-ROM drives. This software has the function to readout the drive speed, set the spin-down time and to open and close the tray. Besides that it can help improve the audio extraction speed.
  
  
• Feurio! demo:
  Feurio! is an integrated program for creating audio-CDs (especially samplers). Feurio! contains an "audio grabbing" (digital extraction of audio-data from an audio CD) program, a CD-database (including CDDB-support), a CD- and wave-player, a sample wave-editor and (of course) a CD-burning program. For more information check www.feurio.com.
  
  
• Vendotto Manager:
  This utility allows access to the TEAC 'Vendotto' microserver from a Windows computer in the same network. Windows XP is also supported in this version.

The Drive:

The drive itself looks a little boring just like the Mitsumi CR-480ATE. On the front of the drive we only find a 'High Speed CD ReWritable' logo indicating the high re-write speeds of the drive. There's no TEAC logo printed on the drive and we suspect this was done to lower the price of the drive. On the front of the drive we do find the usual components like a headphone jack, a volume control, busy/write LED's and of course an eject-button.

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.

Now let's take a look at the features of the TEAC CD-W540E...