Review: NEC ND-2500A Dual format
DVD-Writer
Reviewer: OC-Freak
Firmware:
1.06
Manufactured: December
2003
This time we
will take a look at the latest and greatest DVD-Writer from NEC with the model
number ND-2500A. This is our first experience with DVD-Writers from NEC so we
are unable to compare it to earlier NEC models. But NEC is a large and popular
brand due to the low prices, so keep on reading to find out our experiences with
this drive.
Also thanks to
Memorex for being so generous and providing some of the media used in this
review.
A short
company presentation of the NEC Company:
Corporate Facts: | ||
Company Name | NEC | |
Head Office | 7-1, | |
Established | July 17, | |
Capital | 244.7 | |
As of June 30, | ||
Chairman of the Board | Hajime | |
Vice Chairman of the Board | Koji | |
President | Akinobu | |
Major Operations of the NEC Group | The | |
Net Sales | 4,695.0 | $39,125 |
For the fiscal year ended | ||
1,030.7 | $8,590 | |
For three months ended June | ||
(NEC Corporation and | ||
Employees | ||
NEC | 24,365 | |
As of June 30, | ||
NEC Corporation and Consolidated | ||
145,807 | ||
As of March 31, | ||
Consolidated Subsidiaries | 194 | |
Japan | 92 | |
Overseas | 102 | |
Note:U.S. dollar |
And here is
some information about NEC in Europe:
A leading global manufacturer and
service provider of telecommunication, computer and electronic devices,
NEC
began business in Europe in the early 1970s.
Since then, NEC's activities
have steadily increased to include sales, manufacturing and R&D functions.
Today, NEC has 21 affiliated companies, employing over 5000 personnel,
located across Europe.
NEC's net European sales are in excess of 4000
million euros
(FY 2000-2001).
NEC offers its customers high quality
products, services and system solutions to
facilitate greater business
development opportunities in the Internet era.
For further information on
NEC's products and sales & marketing activities,
please visit the
relevant website.
Drive specifications:
First let us
take a look at the specifications of the drive, the specifications are found at
the NEC Europe homepage
This is the
first writer we have seen that supports 8X DVD-R and 4X DVD-RW. But a CD-Writing
speed of 32X and a CD-ReWriting speed of 16X is slower than most other writers
in the same generation. To bad that we do not have any 4X DVD-RW diss and thus
we will not be able to test this. But we will for sure find out if it have other
qualities, so continue to read on.
Test machine:
For this
review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:
Hardware:
⋅
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8KNXP
with Intel i875P chipset.
⋅
Processor:
Intel Pentium 4 2,8GHz 800MHz FSB with Hyper Threading support.
⋅
RAM: 1Gb
PC3500 DDR
⋅
GFX: ATI
Radeon 9800 pro
⋅
Sound: SB
Audigy 2
⋅
Hard
disks: 2 x Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb in RAID 0
System
set-up:
The NEC
ND-2500A was connected as Primary Slave and identified itself as _NEC
DVD_RW ND-2500A. DMA (Direct Memory Access) and autorun was
enabled for all devices.
Software:
Windows XP
professional is installed on the computer along with Service Pack 1 for windows
XP. We will be using the following software in this review:
⋅
Sonic DLA 4.5
⋅
Ahead Nero Burning ROM version
6.3.0.2
⋅
Ahead Nero CD/DVD Speed
v2.11.4
⋅
Ahead Nero InfoTool v2.07
⋅
Slysoft CloneCD v4.3.1.9
⋅
Exact Audio Copy v0.95 prebeta
3
⋅
K-Probe v1.1.28
Head on to
the next page and find out what the box we got
contained…