I am talking about the 8x4x24x or whatever speeds that are on CDRW drives. What numbers determine the speed of burning, reading, and what tells you the speed of the cd-rom? Like is the 8x4c24x only a 24x speed cd-rom as opposed to the 40x cd-rom i have now? Also, what does the DVD speed mean? Thank you, and if you have any computer buying tips (should I wait for dvd-rw and muli cpu s) I would appreciate if you shared them. Again, thank you.
You’ll have to read the box, but my CDR goes something like 8x4x4x, meaning 8x read , 4x rewrite, 4x write speed. A 4x drive can write at 600 kilobytes per second. As with speeds like 40x, thats just a potential usually reached only on the outside of the disk.
DVD is digival video disk, though I’ve seen a different name for it.
The first number is the maximum speed of burning a CD-R. The second number is the maximum speed of burning a CD-RW. The third number is the maximum speed of reading a CD. There’'s little practical difference between 20X reading and 40X reading, since the 40X is a maximum speed that can only be realized for a very small portion (the beginning portion) of a CD. The 20X also probably cannot be realized for an entire CD. but if you read an entire CD on a 40X drive it will only be a very little bit faster than reading the entire CD on a 20X drive. If you’re sucking images and video clips and whatever off a game CD, you’re almost certainly not going to notice any difference betwen a 20X and 40X drive.
Multiple CPUs have been around for some time, but they’re no use under Windows 9X. NT and WIndows 2000 uses them, but unless you’re running some heavy CPU usage you’re not going to get much out of multiple CPUs. I don’t know if Windows ME will use multiple CPUs.
IMHO, the writable DVD market is a mess, and is likely to reamain so for a few years. Don’t wait.
DVD started as digital video disk, then became digital versatile disk, then became DVD. IOW, DVD officially means DVD and nothing else.
Hum, I’m wrong and *HorseloverFat is right; variable-speed CD readers only reach peak speed at the outer edge of the disk. Since the writing starts from the inner edge, you can only achieve maximum speed when reading from the end of a full or almost-full disk.
The first # (8) is the maximum speed you can write to CDR media. The second (4) is the maximum speed you can write to CDRW media. The last number (24) is the maximum speed (which as previously noted is variable) you can read a regular CD.
DVD-RW is still coming into it’s own and hardware and media costs are relatively high (ie $ 30. +/- for a disk). Unless you absolutely must ride the bleeding edge best to wait a generation or two more for prices to fall.
You want to know what’s weird? You have to have a cdrom that has the right speed to match you drive to write to it…cdroms are rated 1x 2x 4x 8x 
Also, you can’t write too fast sometimes or the buffer gets full.
Handy, don’t even worry about the speed ratings on the discs. They’re pretty meaningless.
Oh, and BTW, there’s a problem when the buffer gets EMPTY, not full.
–Tim
Thank you for replying, but now I wonder which is better to get: One all-in-one DVD/CDRW drive, or one DVD and one CDRW drive. Is it better to copy disc to disk, like that Phillips cd burner? Thank you again.