Rating: 
Summary: Wish I had listened to the people who said this was junk
Review: Have been trying to use this for about 6 months to back up data. Never ending problems. Have no confidence whatsoever in product. Strongly recommend you select something else. Not even Iomega's software. Belongs to Adaptec - which is now Roxio - who have no interest in making this thing work.
Rating:
Summary: Beware of this drive...
Review: ...unless you feel adventurous. I've had the Predator since March of 2001, and I'll say this much for it: it's properly named. Because it is indeed a predator. Unfortunately, it's prey in my case has been stacks and stacks of helpless and innocent CD-R discs. I have a Mac G3 running OS 8.6, although from some of the other reviews I've read here that doesn't seem to make any difference. This product apparently doesn't discriminate when it comes to OS's and hardware. I won't even go into the incredibly long list of everything I tried to get this thing to work. Just suffice it to say that if you can think of it, I tried it. Save your money and buy a good Firewire drive instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Works great on my PowerBook, not so on my Win2000 system.
Review: I had a PII 266 Windows 2000 system when I purchased this drive and 90% of the CDs I burned turned out to be coasters. I then bought my PowerBook and it's been working flawlessly with my Mac and OS X. I'm now looking for the firewire adaptor for this drive, but I haven't been able to find anyone that sells it.
Rating:
Summary: cd-r enthusiast
Review: I bought this thing several months back and it did nothing for me but make coasters. I'm not an inexperienced user of CD burners either. I tried everything in the book - defragged my HD, closed all applications, etc. Nothing worked. If you want a burner that is 10 times better than this, get the new Plextor Plexwriter 24/10/40 USB burner. It supports both USB 2.0 (super fast!) and USB 1.1 and has the BURN-Proof technology which prevents the dreaded "buffer underrun" issue. Plus, Plextor is one of the best brands in CD burning technology. Retail for it is about 200 bucks...very reasonable considering this one isn't that much cheaper.
Rating: 
Summary: Working horse (but not a fast one)
Review: This is a good entry level CD-RW device. I plugged it into my WinXP box, and that was all I had to do to install it. I'm using Nero to burn CDs, and it works nicely. The speed is not fast at all (4x), but not too bad. (If you are looking for speed, you should check the USB 2.0 or Firewire devices with at least 10x). Bottom line, reliable and easy to use entry level CD-RW.
Rating: 
Summary: Great!
Review: I have had this burner for a year and I have NO problems with it. Yes it is not super fast, it is 4x, but it is good for a USB port. I burn about 10 CDs a week and it has never given me any problems. I made a great purchase and this burner is so much better than the HP USB CD burner. Definitely a great purchase!
Rating:
Summary: I haven't had too many problems...
Review: I haven't had too many problems with my Predator, but my brother got one that didn't work right out of the package! I have burned about 7 CD-R discs, and I have only had one that was ruined. I blame this on the fact that my drive hadn't been defragged in ages, and I left a few programs open that I now close. Typically before burning, I close out of all non-essential programs (closing some by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete), suspend any maintenance programs, and do a weekly defrag if I am burning a lot. So far this technique has allowed me to burn perfectly at 4x speed. I use Verbatim and Memorex discs. My computer is an IBM Thinkpad with 64 MB of RAM and a 500 MHZ Celeron processor. The software is nice and convenient, although as usual one must purchase an upgrade to get many of the really nice features (like audio cleaning for records, etc). It comes with MusicMatch, and an upgrade code for it (although you can still upgrade even further for more $$). I personally enjoy MusicMatch as an audio player/recorder. I would say the USB snap-on adaptor, which can be upgraded to firewire, is very convenient. The fact it can be upgraded gives the unit more life than others, although at higher speeds one might expect more skips. However, the USB connector seems flimsy. The Predator also makes a lot of noise, and when it ejects the disc it does so almost violently, making me think one day it might break! Another complaint is about "burn proof technology"... the Predator doesn't have it! So potentially, CD's can end up being digitally encoded coasters! Overall I am happy, and have had very few problems. I can only speak for myself, but I have made many CDs of high quality that I enjoy. I would suggest using the precautions I listed above and see if those don't help prevent skipping when recording. However, some computers just might not work with the drive. The Predator works fine *for me*, and that is all I can report. Oh, it has worked perfectly for my brother too.
Rating:
Summary: I hate this thing
Review: This has been nothing but trouble! It does not recognize any media I try to use and the tech support is useless. I have wasted HOURS trying to get this thing to work. I really wish I had bought something else!
This unit is [bad]!
Rating:
Summary: Listen to the masses and save your money
Review: I bought the Predator drive and regret not reading the reviews on Amazon.com! Initially, the drive burned CD's just fine. I used the drive for 6 months before I encountered the same problems of not recognizing blank CDR's, buffer underruns, system freezes, etc.
I updated the firmware as instructed by Iomega to no avail. I've tried running the drive under different OS's and hardware. I even upgraded the software(Hotburn).
Those of you who haven't encountered problems (yet) are just lucky. I'm no novice and you can trust all the other reviews including this one, DON'T FORK OUT YOUR HARD EARNED DOUGH FOR THIS DRIVE. Regards.
Rating:
Summary: Looks, but nothing else
Review: I just recently bought and returned my iomega predator cd rw. I was excitedly attempting to use it with my G4 mac, but soon discovered that it would become the root of all evil in my computer. True, installation and hook up were incredibly easy, but the lack of mac software was disappointing. I encountered numerous problems, only managing to burn 4 disks in total, wasting over a dozen disks in the process because the iomega support was extremely poor. I used primiarly the online chat support and found their employees to be very unknowledgable and unsympathetic. Suggestions to burn disks at 1x and 2x had to be a joke -- why spend this kind of money on something that takes forever to burn?!
This was a shock for me to discover since up until now I have thought highly of Iomega products.
I would not recommend this product for actual use -- if you want something to sit on your computer desk and look pretty, this is it. Spend your money elsewhere.
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