Mar. '00 Headlines

In the past, both DVD drives and CD-RW drives were separate units. The DVD-ROM drive did the reading DVD titles and CD-ROM programs, while the CD-RW drive was there for mass storage of files, and occasional backups. Recently, Ricoh combined the best of both worlds into one drive: a combo DVD/CD-RW unit.

Ricoh's MP9060a is one of the first drives to accomplish this feat. The drive reads CD-related data at 6X/4X/24X and reads DVD data at quad speed. DVD films are handled by a software decoder-- playback should be acceptable on any system with a Celeron 400 MHz processor or better.

The unit is rather expensive; it comes along with $399 price tag. If someone is slightly interested in buying such a product, our best advice here at CALROG.COM would be to wait a couple months. Competition for such drives will arise and possibly lower the price to around $200 before Christmas. However, if new technology is all you want, and you got the pocketbook of Donald Trump, plugging down a few hundred dollars for a product of this caliber is no shame.

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Ricoh Introduces DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive

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