Ricoh RW7060A CD-RW

by Chip Parker

The wonderful world of computers is not complete unless you personally own a CD-RW drive for all your personal and financial needs. Ricoh, an excellent company with excellent merchandise, has come up with a grand slam, home run, sheik CD-RW of their own. The model RW7060A, by Ricoh is a gem for all to see. Did it create miracles? No, it was the miracle.

The installation of this great machine was a hassle for me. I own a Packard Bell, which are hard to service due to the lack of space inside. Due to my computer, I am not going to lower the score on installation, because I can do it on my friends computer easily. You install it like any other drive you have. Read the nicely crafted manual and directions and you should have it installed in a matter of 5-10 minutes with its Atapi/IDE interface.

The software sent with the Ricoh drive was extremely important to the process of writing the CDs, such as the WinOnCD program made by CeQuadrat. They are good programs with great interface. They had easy instructions along with wizards to help you through the process. CeQuadrat allowed Ricoh to ship with their drives, 3 major important programs for writing CDs. These programs proceed as the following:

PacketCD:
This allows you to write on CDs like floppy disks. This is very handy if you want to store some program files, or back up your hardrive. This is an easy way to transfer your info from one source to another, and if you just want to clean up your hardrive.

WinOnCD:
This is a great program for those who are just starting to re-write CDs. It has a wizard that allows you to chose what kind of CD you are going to make, whether it is a music CD, data CD, game CD, and etc. I recommend this program to anyone, including people who have been re-writing CDs for a while. This is a good program, and Ricoh knows that they are doing, when they give things like this to help you have the best experience and best quality you can get.

Just!Audio:
This is a program strictly made to make music CDs. If that is the kind of CD, you are going to make, then this is the program that you want to use. It has a very easy interface. It allows you to make CD labels and CD covers within minutes.

Along with these great programs supplied by CeQuadrat, Graphic Corp also supplied Ricoh with some software. These programs were mainly to make CD labels for your CD itself as well as booklets and the backs of CDs. To be quite honest with you, I only used this to make the CD label for the CD itself. I used Adobe Photoshop to make the booklet. This is a good program for what is was designed for.

Adding to the fast collection of software sent with the CD-RW is a backup program by Seagate. It is called "Backup Exec." It backs up your work to ensure that you get the best quality when you write your CDs. I did not use this much at all, but it is needed non-the least.

Now for the performance of this monster, what can I say? It worked each time! It wrote to each CD without a flaw, unless the data I was writing had a flaw. I saw nothing wrong with the drive itself. It worked pure miracles and everything to a "T". I even tried this CD-RW with 5 different kinds of CD-R CDs. I tried the Kodak kind, no flaws. I tried the FujiFilm CDs, no flaws. I tried the Maxwell CDs, no flaws. Ricoh sent me Ricoh CDs, no flaws on them either. I also tried regular CDs with no labels, the cheap kind, and again, no flaws. I give this thing a perfect 10 on performance.

If I needed to do something on my computer, I would set the writing speed at 2. Then I could work on my computer knowing the CD will still turn out to be perfect with no under buffer run or anything like that. If I didn't have anything to do, then I would have the writing speed at the highest it could go, at 4. It would take approximately 20-25 minutes per CD at the speed of 4.

Time to pull out the nitty gritty and tell everyone about the price of this Ricoh bad boy. This Ricoh wonder machine is only $249. This is not shabby at all for the amount of perfection that was put into this CD-RW. It is well worth the money. I would dish out $300 dollars for a machine that works this good. There are companies that want you to pay $300 or more on a CD-RW similar to Ricoh's. Still they cannot come close to their price or quality.

Leave it to me to determine good and bad. I have had my share of terrible re-writeable drives and PC related hardware. This has to be the best thing my hands have touched in the entire PC world. I would much rather have this than any other gadget available on the market. Well besides a new computer considering I am playing with a P1, 233Mhz 3.2GB computer. Ricoh amazed me again with this CD-RW. I recommend this to all my friends, and everyone. This CD-RW, by Ricoh, is truly "award winning."

Specifications:

• Type: Internal Type

• Interface: Enhanced IDE (Atapi)

• Writing Speed: [1x, 2x, 4x, 6x (CD-R)] [1x, 2x, 4x (CD-RW)]

• Reading Speed: 24x Max/Cav

• Buffer Memory: 2MB

• Weight: 1.5Kg

• Power Consumption: Less then 12W

• Installation: Horizontal / Vertical

• Dust Environment: Less than class 3 Million

System Requirements:

• IBM PC/AT Compatible

• Pentium 166Mhz or better processor 32MB RAM or greater. (More than 64MB RAM recommended for Windows NT)

• Hard Disk: Average access time less then 19msec. Transfer rate 1,200 kb/sec or higher. Available disk space 75MB or higher.

• Open 5 ¼ half-height mass storage bay.

• Open +12V/+5V power supply connector.