External burner pros & cons
When a product becomes mass-market, take-overs, mergers and joint-ventures result - and you normally end up with only a small group of companies making the product in large volumes. Optical disc drives and burners are no exception.
Truth is, there's little to separate the burners that are produced by this handful of mass-market manufacturers and that's the reason why each firm shouts so loudly when it manages, for a while, to be able to claim its product has the fastest burning speed.
To date, no competitor has overtaken Samsung's claimed top burning-speed of 18x for an external writer but Lite-On has announced a 20x internal ATAPI/E-IDE model, so an external 20x version is sure to follow.
The Samsung-branded SE-S184 external model is designed, so the retail box says, by TSST (Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology) - a joint-venture with Toshiba. It connects to a computer via USB 2.0, though probably could use USB 1.1 if you were willing to accept utterly dire write speeds.
Being external has advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, there's no need to open the PC at all - you just plug in the burner, following instructions, of course.
And, being external makes the Samsung flexible. You can connect it to any compatible computer equipped with USB 2.0, so it's not locked inside a PC, as an internal burner would effectively be.
We believe that users of Apple Macs fitted with USB 2.0 should also find that the SE-S184 works with their computers - though we haven't tested this and Samsung only talks about it being compatible with Windows 2000 (SP4 or later) and Windows XP (SP1 and later).
But, if you plan to use the Samsung with an Apple computer, make sure that you have the latest version of Roxio's Toast software for Macs. This burning suite adds support for a huge number of burners that is lacking in Apple's own Mac OS X operating system and burning tools. Toast also offers a whole lot of other useful features. Check our in-depth review of the Apple Mac mini - Core Duo to appreciate what we mean.
We're actually great fans of external burners, just because they are so flexible and let you use them on any compatible computer, rather than just one. Typically, though, we'd not buy all-in-one external burners, such as the Samsung.
Instead, we'd go the DIY route - mating an external drive case with an internal burner. Internal burners are considerably cheaper than dedicated external models, so our method is a more cost-effective way of staying abreast of the latest technology than buying a new external burner each time.
Mind you, the prices of internal and external burners have fallen so far now that, although the difference between them in percentage terms is large, externals are, nonetheless, great value for money even if internals are better value still. The SE-184, as we said, can be had for just £39 and the internal model on which it's based for under £21 - both prices including VAT and a suite of software.
The external cases that we buy are usually fitted with cooling fans and these can be rather noisy. Consequently, we unplug their fans from power when using them for DVD burners. The noise is especially noticeable if the case is used without its top on - as ours often are. However, not having the top on means that running without a fan is unlikely to cause any overheating problems even if the case holds a hard disk drive.
When we feel the need to buy into new burner technology, we pull out the previous top-dog burner that's in the external case (and that case connects by USB or FireWire, to give the greatest flexibility) and replace it with the new writer.
Then, we take the burner we removed from the external case and fit it internally into another PC in place of the older-generation model. We keep on shuffling the burners down through our various PCs, finally pulling out the oldest one at the end of the chain and passing it on to someone else or bunging it on a shelf, just in case.
But, you might be wondering, if we're like external burners so much why don't we have external cases for all DVD writers we use and avoid all the messing round with opening PC cases?
Well, that's because external burners do have some real disadvantages. Whether the external burner is a dedicated model or a DIY type, it will take up a valuable USB (or FireWire) port and result in two more cables to manage - one of them for power and requiring use of yet another mains socket.
In addition, it's going to eat up desk-space - and the way we work, with the lid off, the burner is dead space - it's not a good idea to rest anything on top of a naked drive!
Okay, you now have an inkling of what an up-to-date DVD burner can do - and appreciate the pros and cons of using an external model - so, let's get specific and dive over to page three to take a close look at Samsung's offering and check out its claimed specs.