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muchachotron · Jul 15, 2005, 08:04 AM

hello, is anyone else thinking of doing this upgrade? this gives you an 8x superdrive that can burn dual and double layer dvds. it says its also a little lighter than the stock apple drives.

i still need to purchase tiger, so this wouid be taking care of that upgrade as well (they sell tiger for $79 with the purchase of one of the superdrive upgrades).

http://www.mcetech.com/pbg4dvdr8dl.html

looks pretty good, i'm just curious if anyone else has installed an mce upgrade before. i'd be installing this in my 1.5ghz 17 inch pb. does anybody recommend against this upgrade?

- d

ibookuser2 · Jul 16, 2005, 08:39 PM

I have this drive. Got it out of necessity in order to replace a dead drive in my 15" Titanium. So far it's worked great. I haven't burned a dual-layer disc yet (they're still pretty expensive to just be burning test discs.) I've been satisfied with it.

muchachotron · Jul 16, 2005, 09:23 PM

thanks for the reply. yeah, the dual layer media is still pretty expensive, hopefully it will start to go down in price since dual layer burners are becoming more popular.

do you use toast for burning discs? that i my primary optical media software, so i'm hoping there are no problems using it with these mce drives.

- d

ibookuser2 · Jul 16, 2005, 09:30 PM

Yeah, I use Toast. There's just one minor little quirk, and that's that the drive will adjust the burning speed down if you're using cheap media in order to ensure a good burn (regardless of what program you're using.) Toast calculates the time remaining to burn a disc based on the speed you selected, so that time won't be accurate if the drive decides it needs to step the speed down to get a good burn. Other than that, no problems.

muchachotron · Jul 17, 2005, 01:23 AM

i guess thats a good thing, in the end. i'd prefer not to be tossing discs that would otherwise burn successfuly just to possibly save a handful of minutes.

did you do the drive install yourself? if so, how was it? difficult? is there any problem getting the slot loading mechanism lined up with the slot in the powerbook outer shell?

i'm surprised no one else is chiming in here, this seems like a pretty desirable little device. i was going to get a firewrire external burner but i think i'd prefer to have it built into the powerbook. increases the resale value, as well.

- d

Since EBCDIC · Jul 17, 2005, 05:36 AM

Well, I can't talk to replacing the stock unit with this particular model, but I *did* replace it with the latest non-dual-layer CD/DVD+-RW unit.

It wasn't particularly hard, assuming that you can follow the directions you'll find on the web, are very careful with unfastening the ribbon cable connectors, and can avoid any espresso drinks near the open unit.

Probably took less than a half-hour from shutdown to restart. YMMV. Be careful. Nothing's more embarassing than going to the Apple Store with your hardware in pieces in a shopping bag :-)

aplmd · Jul 17, 2005, 09:02 AM

I am in the same boat.. wanting to replace my Superdrive in my Ti 15" PB. I see otherworldcomputing.com has one with the same specs as MCE for $169 (instead of $199) Has anyone tried OWC's DVD drive?? Also, FWI.. they have instructions on their website to tell you how to do it yourself.

muchachotron · Jul 17, 2005, 01:02 PM

i regularly purchase my RAM from owc, and i recently bought one of their external fw800 hard drive enclosures that i am very happy with.

the owc dvd drive is rated to burn dual layer at 2.4x, and the mce drive is rated at 4x. perhaps this is not a big deal. also, the mce drive has dvd-rw dl listed at 4x, while that format is not listed on the owc drive at all.

its unfortunate that neither of these include any dual layer media, not even one disc! they do include dvd-r discs (owc gives you 10 in cases, mce gives you one).

- d

agentmouthwash · Jul 18, 2005, 07:41 AM

Hey Muchachotron, I just purchased one of those MCE drives for my 15" Powerbook. I should get it today.
I plan on taking photos of the installation process. I'll post the link here when I'm done.

hakstooy · Jul 18, 2005, 12:02 PM

There's no need to buy this drive for $200.

Its just a Pioneer/Matshita DVD-R drive. You can get them at places like this for considerably cheaper. They have 2.4x and 4x DL drives.

muchachotron · Jul 18, 2005, 10:23 PM

what about drivers/software/firmware for the device? would i be missing out on anything to make it function by buying it from one of the places that didn't sell it as some sort of package for macs? i have installed ram and hard drives before, but never replaced an optical drive. should i just expect it to work when i put it in my 17 inch powerbook, or do i need to install a driver of some sort?

hakstooy · Jul 19, 2005, 08:40 AM

no, you don't need any drivers, the drive will be recognized natively by os x and run just fine. all third party apps will work immediately.

the ilife apps were the exception because up until ilife 5 they would only recognize internal "native" superdrives, and patchburn was a way to remedy this. patchburn is essentially drivers that let you use an aftermarket superdrive with ilife. now, with ilife being less prejudiced i don't know if patchburn is even needed, but i'm sure that info is on the site.

basically, it will work just fine. the only thing that i can tell the mac resellers give you that the depot places don't is maybe some instructions or something. you're essentially paying them $75 for them figuring out which drive will work in your powerbook, but i already did that for free