A CD burner used to be the only practical and affordable option for a rewritable optical drive. That has changed radically. Selecting DVD burners over older CD-RWs is becoming a no-brainer, with the future clearly moving to DVD. And now multiple generations of DVD burners are available, giving you a range of speeds and prices to choose from.
Today, a top 52X/24X/52X CD-RW drive costs less than $150. But for $100 more, you can get a DVD burner with CD-RW functionality. If you add another $50, you can buy a fast, new rewritable DVD drive like Pioneer"s DVR-A05.
DVD offers plenty of benefits. While standard CDs store up to 700MB of data, DVD discs hold a whopping 4.7GB per side. That means enough capacity for a full-length DVD-quality movie, fewer discs to swap during backups, and less wasted space on the shelf.
CD media is still cheaper than DVD media, but both 2X DVD-Rs and 1X DVD-RWs have dropped well below $2 apiece, putting them on a par with CD-R/RW in cost per GB. Though 4X DVD-R and DVD+RW/+R media are pricier, all DVD media costs are falling with no end in sight