Man who knows nothing about PC's needs advice
Discussion
I have a old cheap PC that does all what I need , apart from burn DVD's . It is PC worlds finest E Machines 140 DVD . Spec is 1.1 GHz , 128 mb ram , 20gig hard drive .
As you can see it has a DVD player but I need to now be able to burn DVD's . So does any know which type of DVD RW I should get and what will/wont work . I take it I will have to remove the DVD player it already has , or will it only be able to take a external DVD RW ?
Any advice you have would be great .
As you can see it has a DVD player but I need to now be able to burn DVD's . So does any know which type of DVD RW I should get and what will/wont work . I take it I will have to remove the DVD player it already has , or will it only be able to take a external DVD RW ?
Any advice you have would be great .
You can get an external DVD writer, but be warned, the data throughput is high and you need to make sure you can support it. For example, do you have firewire or USB 2.0?
If not then a simple replacement for the internal CD / DVD with a DVD writer might be the best thing. They are down to less than £80 so not expensive - even have two (like me, one CDR and one DVDR).
The only other word of caution is with the PC itself. Again the throughput is high and your PC might not be up to it. Maybe a little more memory to make it a little quicker? The hard disk might not be fast enough either, but you should be able to experiment to check this out.
If not then a simple replacement for the internal CD / DVD with a DVD writer might be the best thing. They are down to less than £80 so not expensive - even have two (like me, one CDR and one DVDR).
The only other word of caution is with the PC itself. Again the throughput is high and your PC might not be up to it. Maybe a little more memory to make it a little quicker? The hard disk might not be fast enough either, but you should be able to experiment to check this out.
Easiest thing would be to swap your current DVD drive with a new DVD Writer. You can get a decent dual layer Pioneer writer 'drive-only' for around £50, although you'll need software as well (I use Nero, it's very good, you might get it with a drive if you buy the 'retail' boxed version)
If you have enough room in the case, you can keep your existing DVD drive if you want; this lets you do drive-to-drive copies and use two disks at once but might give you a few problems with software conflicts and cabling which can be a pain, but i'm sure the good people of PH will be able to help if you go down that route.
If you have enough room in the case, you can keep your existing DVD drive if you want; this lets you do drive-to-drive copies and use two disks at once but might give you a few problems with software conflicts and cabling which can be a pain, but i'm sure the good people of PH will be able to help if you go down that route.
Just looked up an EMachines 140, that's a 1.1Ghz Celeron. I would avoid going with an external USB/Firewire solution, they can be quite twitchy and usually have high CPU useage overheads.
Best bet would be to replace the existing DVD reader with a DVD writer, as others have suggested you can pick up a decent barebones drive only for £50, most of them will come with an assortment of cables and probably some sort of burning software (usual Nero) but it won't have all the flash packaging and numptie approved 'how to fit it' stuff. But it's really easy, unscrew the case, unscrew the drive, unplug cables. Reverse action and your laughing.
Best bet would be to replace the existing DVD reader with a DVD writer, as others have suggested you can pick up a decent barebones drive only for £50, most of them will come with an assortment of cables and probably some sort of burning software (usual Nero) but it won't have all the flash packaging and numptie approved 'how to fit it' stuff. But it's really easy, unscrew the case, unscrew the drive, unplug cables. Reverse action and your laughing.
www.overclockers.co.uk were selling a NEC 3500 which is meant to be the dogs doo-dars for £50 + p&p. Got one for a mate and it's superb!
Replace the internal one (IDE) and make sure you don't write too quickly (1 or 2x max I'd reckon).
Replace the internal one (IDE) and make sure you don't write too quickly (1 or 2x max I'd reckon).
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