I get worried about my computer. Actually, the data stored on the computer, such as email and the family digital photos. Computing, as some of you may have experienced, can be frustrating. Errors in Windows seem to happen daily if your system is askew. The Internet is not a safe place as well. Viruses are everywhere, even in images viewed on websites! Also, hard drives can crash - even though only one has crashed on me ever. In an effort to avoid total disaster should my computer go haywire, I decided to back everything up. I was going to back everything up to another internal hard drive - but what if my computer overheated blowing up both hard drives? I needed an external solution. I decided on finally getting a DVD burner.

Why a DVD burner? Well, if I stayed with my trusty old CD burner to back up the information I desired, it would probably take 10-15 discs. If I backed it up to DVD it might only take 2 or 3 disks. This is because CDs hold about 650MB of information. Compare this to 4.3 GB of information a DVD can hold and you see why DVD is the answer for now. Also, the price of DVD media (the blank stuff) is coming down. I think CDs are about .20 to .25 cents per disc while DVDs are about .50 to .80 cents per (at least the stuff I get). Dual-layer DVDs (the ones movies come on) are still a bit pricey, but that doesn’t matter for now.

I did some quick research on [cnet.com], [tom’s hardware guide] and [videohelp.com]. I then chose my burner: the Pioneer DVD A08XL - in black to match my system. I chose this particular burner because (1) it could burn at a high speed, (2) it had a rebate offer, and (3) it was black to match my computer.

Installation of the drive was straightforward. I was able to burn a DVD once I installed the included software. I was also able to burn DVDs using Nero, which I find better than the included software. I like this drive, and burning with DVDs. The only downside I see with this specific drive so far: it seems slower at burning CDs than my old CD burner.