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Writing CDs: Any Time, Any Place with by Ross L. Kodner, Esq. Face it, if you don’t own a rewritable CD-ROM drive, you’re missing out on one of the most useful techno.gadgets around. Uses for rewritable CD-ROM drives abound. Some examples include: Ë A perfect way to backup documents and other data files Ë What better medium for archiving older information? Ë CD is the most universal medium for sharing information today - while some people may not have a ZIP drive or an LS-120 Superdisk, everyone can read CDs . . . and it’s likely to be that way for a long time If you consider the uses above, and then also consider the scary fact that many Mobile Lawyers never backup their hard drives--filled with potentially irreplaceable client work product--you have the perfect raison d’être for Hewlett-Packard’s M820e portable CD-Rewritable drive. Somehow Hewlett-Packard, working their usual engineering wizardry, has managed to cram a high-performance rewritable CD-ROM drive into a slim 15 oz. package. With a footprint barely larger than the CD media itself, this compact marvel is the perfect accompaniment for the high-profile legal Road Warrior - someone who can ill afford not to be self-sufficient when on the road or prepping for a distant trial. The svelte unit measures only 1" tall by 5.25" wide and 6.25" deep. There is also a cable that attaches to the HP SCSI PC Card interface--the cable adds 2 ounces to the weight. The unit requires an AC adapter, which while only 3 ounces and quite compact, is still a small disappointment--a rechargeable Lithium Ion internal battery would be my only wish list item for the M820e. Setup was typically HP.simple. The M820e comes with Adaptec’s benchmark Easy CD Creator and DirectCD. The latter is a very simplistic wizard-driven program that can create either audio or data CDs. The former is one of the most widely-used CD writing applications, employing a drag-and-drop Explorer-like interface . . . a model of operational simplicity and instantly intuitive for anyone who has ever used Windows Explorer. From the time the box was opened to the time I was ready to burn my first CD was under 10 minutes. The test laptop was a Toshiba Tecra 8000 with 256 meg of RAM and Windows 95. The drive was also briefly compatibility-tested on another Toshiba laptop with Windows 98 and performed equally well. Note that Windows NT 4.0 is supported as well. Hewlett-Packard specifies a minimum of Windows 95B OSR2 as the PC’s operating system, a Pentium 133 MHZ equipped desktop or laptop PC with at least 32 meg of RAM, and 35 meg of free hard drive space - note also that if the M820e is used with a desktop PC, an external SCSI cable is required; this is not included with the drive. Performance-wise, this diminutive drive is quick! The M820e reads CD-ROMs at 20x speed, and writing CD-R’s (read only disks) at 4x speed and also CD-RW’s at 4x speed (readable AND writable/erasable discs - almost like another hard drive on the system). To give you an idea, I burned a CD-R containing about 120 megabytes of CLE materials in a total elapsed time of 6 minutes. That included the automated two step process Easy CD Creator employs where a "test run" is made first to ensure a successful "burn" and then the writing process actually occurs, burning the data to the CD. Of course, this is a multi-session CD-R device. That means that you can continue writing to the CD in separate sessions until it is full. This is the case even though a CD-R disc is used. With slightly more costly CD-RW discs, you can effectively treat each as a removeable hard drive . . . meaning you have virtually unlimited capacity . . . in the 650 megabyte chunks that a CD-RW disc can hold. One important tip: be sure you use CD-R or CD-RW media specifically rated for 4x recording speeds. Bargain CD media may not be rated for 4x recordability and can cause problems--avoid it. Information on the M820e CD-RW portable drive is available at http://www.hpcdwriter.com/products/fs_products.asp?page=m820e/index.htm or via http://www.hpcdwriter.com/products/fs_products.asp. HP recently reduced the price of the drive from it’s original $599 price point to $399 with "street pricing" even less. For all of the possible mobile uses a legal Road Warrior might encounter, the HP M820e portable CD-RW drive is just the rewritable ticket! PROS: * Lightweight and physically compact * Quick in all operational modes * Easy to install and great bundled software * Reasonably-priced CONS: * Requires AC power adapter; a battery option would be nice CONTACT: Hewlett-Packard Corporation
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