[ILUG] CD Burners

[Ferren MacIntyre]

The discussion about CD burners is beautifuly topical, if a bit off track
for me.  I was, you see, thinking of downloading some Linux distros onto
CDs (although I now have CDs of Mandrake 8.0 which are supposed to work).
(I have so far discovered that MacOS on an external LaCie Pocket Drive will
not boot.  Nor can I partition it with Drive Setup or pdisk.  Accordingly I
haven't quite figured out how to get Mandrake on it. ...  Does this answer
someone's question about why in the world I wanted a pre-installed Linux?)

A US friend, when asked about a Mac-compatible burner, replied
QPSCDRW241040FEM, $180 from CompUSA after rebates.  Same device from CompuB
is ¤350.  Local Mac at UCG guru says they have returned both LaCie and
Iomega burners because they won't work on the Mac; the Web suggests that
changing hardware inside the box from Sony to Sanyo (e.g.) requires surgery
deep in MacOS, changing a name from 'xxx12' to 'xxx24' somewhere--the sort
of thing that takes weeks to discover and seconds to fix.

If you had a friend coming from the States, and wanted a CD burner for an
iMac (USB, Firewire, no SCSI), and you planned eventually to run Mandrake,
what might you recommend?

Cheers,

--Ferren

_______________________________________
'Microsoft sells you Windows, Linux gives you the whole house'.
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Dr Ferren MacIntyre       |   The Mews, Carnacrow
MRI, Nat. Uni. Ireland     |   HEADFORD, Co. Galway
Galway, Ireland               |   Ireland
+353 91 52 4411 x3202  |  +353 93 35 0 27
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