8x SuperDrive?

Hi all,

I am wondering whether there are any benefits in having the Apple SuperDrive as opposed to a DVD writer from a 3rd party vendor? There are other, faster DVD writers on the market, such as the new Pioneer 109 and the LaCie drives. Both of them are less expensive then the upgrade of the SuperDrive. Also is the SuperDrive Dual or Single layer?

So I am wondering whether the SuperDrive is in any way intergrated into the Mac system that lets burning go smoother? Would things like iDVD work with a 3rd party writer or only with the SuperDrive?

Also, what are your general impressions of the SuperDrive. 8x is a little behind the rest of the market, but does the SuperDrive make up for it in reliability? Will it still use most medias? Those types of questions.

Thank you all very much for your help,

Stefan

The superdrive is actually a 16x dual layer burner that apple put a firmware patch on to make it single and 8x. You can download a patch online to turn it into its original 16x Dual Layer drive. The drive is a pioneer 108 I believe

iDVD will not burn directly to a 3rd party writer but you can save the file as an image and burn it through finder to the 3rd party drive

The drive supports -R/+R -RW/+RW

you can also use patchburn and make i apps burn on a third party drive.

Okay, thank you both,

essentially what you are saying is that there isn't much point in getting anything besides the SuperDrive because it is in fact just as good as anything else out there with the firmware patch and because it can use the iDVD properly? Thanks again,

Stefan

superdrive

trpnmonkey41 said:

The superdrive is actually a 16x dual layer burner that apple put a firmware patch on to make it single and 8x. You can download a patch online to turn it into its original 16x Dual Layer drive. The drive is a pioneer 108 I believe

iDVD will not burn directly to a 3rd party writer but you can save the file as an image and burn it through finder to the 3rd party drive

The drive supports -R/+R -RW/+RW

Click to expand...

I have a very unreliable superdrive, that most of the time doesn't work. If I use a third party writer, can I use the system disk witht the third party in case of a major crash?

Thanks