Product Reviews

As more MAC users buy PowerBooks, it becomes more important that the peripherals which are essential to using a Mac effectively become more portable. This is especially true for peripherals that, in a desktop machine, might otherwise fit inside the case. CD-RW drives are a perfect case in point.

The latest generation of slimline, half-height CD-RW mechanisms, coupled with FireWire and USB interfaces, mean that, for the first time, it's practical to create a portable CD-RW that doesn't weigh half a ton. LaCie and Amacom have produced two new drives which take slightly different approaches to the essential trade-off between price, speed and portability, yet both have come up with solid solutions for slightly different markets.

At first glance, LaCie's drive seems the more accomplished. Contained in a rubberised case that will be familiar to anyone who has seen one of the company's Pocket Drive hard drives, this CD-RW drive is small, square, blue, and feels robust enough to take being bumped around in a laptop bag. The back features FireWire and USB ports, as well as a port for power-in, which is only required if the drive is being used with USB (it draws power from the computer if used with FireWire).

Amacom's Baby CD-RW appears to be less sturdy at first, with a silver case which matches the PowerBook G4 range. However, closer contact reveals a solid, well-built drive that's in no way as fragile as the case would suggest. Unlike the LaCie, the Amacom drive has just two ports on the back: one for power and a second that can cope with multiple interfaces using different cables. The drive comes supplied with either USB or FireWire as standard, and as with the LaCie drive, it can draw its power from FireWire.

While the LaCie Pocket Drive we tested uses the latest 8x mechanism, Amacom has settled for a 4x one with a considerably lower price, and the performance figures bare out the difference between the drives. To get a more accurate picture of drive performance, we copied a 620Mb-disk image using both drives using a beta version of Toast 5.0.

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Using FireWire, which maximises the performance of both drives, LaCie's PocketDrive took nine minutes 36 seconds to burn the image, while Amacom's Baby CD-RW took 18 minutes 53 seconds. To illustrate the difference between USB and FireWire performance, we also tested the PocketDrive using USB, where it delivered a much slower burn speed of 17 minutes 55 seconds as the drive is restricted to a 4x burn rate.

Burning issue

Burning disks using FireWire was reliable when copying images, although at 8x, the PocketDrive failed once when doing a direct disk-to-disk copy of a CD in the Mac's drive. This was the only failure of any of our tests, which reflects the reliability of both these devices.

In fact, this failure illustrates one of the key considerations of buying a modern CD-RW drive: the choice of interface. Because USB has limited bandwidth compared with FireWire, it's far easier to run up against the limits of how much data you put through it - with disastrous consequences in the case of CD burning. Because CD authoring relies on having a steady stream of data going to the drive, any drop in the data throughput is likely to lead to a failed disc. So unless you have a Mac without FireWire, or are on a desperately tight budget, you should always choose a FireWire drive.

Both drives come with Mac and PC software. LaCie, like most other vendors, supplies a cut-down version of Roxio Toast 4.1 (version 5.0 will follow later in the year). Amacom, however, uses CharisMac Discribe, a less well-known product that nonetheless delivers most of the features you could ever want. Both packages allow you to copy and burn disks in a variety of formats, and there's little to choose between the two in terms of ease of use. Both packages lack the bells and whistles of Toast Deluxe, but for day-to-day use they're more than adequate.

Name your price

Both these drives are well-built with easy-to-use packages that are unlikely to disappoint. Even if you have a desktop Mac, drives this small look attractive, and make their larger (and more powerful) cousins look like dinosaurs. But they're also ideal for anyone who has a laptop, or wants to share a CD-RW between more than one machine.

Deciding between the two drives is a question of budget, and whether your machine is equipped with FireWire. On a FireWire-based Mac, the LaCie is clearly much faster, although you pay for this with a higher price than Amacom's model. If all you have is USB, then the Amacom drive is a clear winner, as you won't be able to take advantage of the extra speed delivered by the LaCie drive anyway.

NEEDS: Mac OS 8.1, FireWire or USB port