The possible (partially just percieved) difference is in a) ease of installation (some no-name drives can require some extra steps), and b) dependability of the recorded disks.
I don't have data, but I am ready to bet that the amount of jitter (for those who doesn't know what it is, - essentially, "noise" on the media) - is different for different drives. While it might not matter for a freshly recorded disk, after some time one might see problems while reading from cheap disks. Some amount of decay (caused by not-completely-proper conditions) combined with the jitter may result in data loss. So, by paying a bit higher $$ for the brand name you may be buying a peace of mind, an insurance ... .. or not, as sometimes even an insurance police might not gurantee protection. If all you need is to move files from one computer to another via a DVD disk, - then all this doesn't matter. Igor Sat, 14 Jan 2006 22:37:58 -0800 Mishka wrote: Absolutely correct. $60 these days buys a 8x DVD+/*/%/-R burner. I've got one (Sony) from BestBuy a couple of weeks ago when my old one (for which I paid something like $300) croaked. $50-60 sounds about right and I don't think the brand is important at all. best, Mishka
