Product Reviews

VST has become well known for its portable storage devices and it led the way in using FireWire to produce 'pocket-sized' hard drives. So it's no surprise it has joined the fray in the portable CD-RW market.

The VST FireWire CD-R/W is a portable CD-RW drive, similar to the LaCie and Amacom devices we reviewed in April (6 April 2001, p30). It differs from the LaCie device in that it offers FireWire ports, but no USB, and it writes at a maximum speed of 4x. However, unlike the Amacom device, it uses a standard FireWire port and cable to connect to the Mac.

Measuring 135mm x 22mm x 170mm, the drive is barely bigger than the CD it houses, making it easy to carry in a bag or laptop case. It can be powered via the FireWire cable, eliminating the need for a separate power supply. However, there's a power socket for occasions when the FireWire bus

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can't supply the necessary power.

The casing is similar to VST's FireWire hard drives and it looks professional and unobtrusive. In addition to the two FireWire ports and the power socket, there's a headphone mini-jack and a Kensington lock connection. VST also includes a 60cm FireWire cable.

The loading mechanism for CD media is a drawer, the eject button is effective and the mechanism surprisingly smooth. Although lacking the rubber bumper featured on the LaCie CD-RW, the VST device seems robust enough to cope with all but the most careless handling.

The drive ships with Toast 4.1.2 for burning CDs, and MusicMatch Jukebox for encoding and playing MP3s. Toast 4.1.2 is a decent basic CD authoring tool, but anyone who wants the full feature set of Toast 5 Titanium will have to upgrade.

We tested the drive by burning a 622Mb disk image using Toast 5.1 Titanium and it took 18 minutes 49 seconds. What's more, the countdown timer in Toast's main interface window gave an accurate representation of the time remaining, which isn't the case with all drives.

There's little to choose between the VST CD-R/W and the 4x version of the LaCie Pocket CD-RW. They are comparatively priced and are very similar in size and shape. The LaCie's bumper may give it added protection, but it also makes it slightly more bulky. So if you want the absolute smallest CD-RW drive on the market, then the VST just has the edge.