Teac unveils light, small, fast CD-R/RW drive

From...

By Martyn Williams

(IDG) -- Japan's Teac Corp. has developed a light and small portable CD-RW drive that takes advantage of the latest version of the USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface standard to offer faster read and write speeds than have been possible to date with the interface.

IDG.net INFOCENTER

Features

Visit an IDG site

IDG.net search

The CD-W28PU drive supports the latest version of the USB interface standard, version 2.0, which increases the maximum data transmission speed along the cable by a factor of 40 from USB 1.1's 12M bps (bits per second) to around 480M bps. For users, that translates into faster data transfers when using USB-connected optical drives.

In the case of Teac's new drive, a USB 2.0 connection supports record and rewrite speeds of 8x for CD-R and CD-RW and a read speed of 24x for conventional CD-ROM disks but these fall to read/write speeds of 6x for CD-R/RW/ROM when using a conventional USB 1.1 connection. Random access time is 110 milliseconds and the drive has a 2M-byte data buffer.

Beyond its speed, size and weight are major selling points for the device. It weighs 250 grams making it one of the lightest portable optical CD-R/RW drives yet produced and, at 133 millimeters by 15 mm by 146 mm, is just a little larger than a conventional CD jewel case.

Teac is an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) company and doesn't sell its products to end users but rather to other companies who rebadge them and sell them under their own name. The company has begun international sales of the new drive and commercial products based on the unit are already appearing in Japan. Logitec Corp., a domestic computer peripherals supplier, announced a drive based on the Teac unit on Thursday. It will carry a retail price of 29,000 yen (US$225) and go on sale in a few days.