Plextor Debuts 18x DVD±R Burner: The new PX-810UF screams along at 18x for a single layer DVD±R

With so many disc formats and external device data transfer options on today’s market it’s hard to find a device which supports it all. Plextor, a company known for developing computer accessories like digital video convertors and optical disc drives, recently announced an external drive it thinks will solve most of your multi-format problems. The new PX-810UF DVD Super Drive is priced at $139 and should be available now.

The Plextor PX-810UF DVD Super Drive is a workhorse of an external DVD burner style drive. It supports burning to multiple DVD and CD formats. The drive is also capable of supporting both USB 2.0 and FireWire connectivity, which are ports commonly found on the backs of Windows computers and Macs that you use for connecting devices like the PX-810UF. With these ports and software included with the DVD burner you can backup files for situations like restoring files after a computer crash or archiving your digital music collection.

In terms of specific recording to disc speeds the Plextor PX-810UF delivers at 18X DVD±R on single-layer media, 10X DVD±R on Double-Layer and Dual-Layer (DL) media, and 12X DVD-RAM. The drive also supports 8X DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW, 16X max DVD-ROM, 48X CD-R/ROM, 32X CD-RW, 12X DVD-RAM. DVD±VR is supported for direct disc recording and DVD+RW background format is offered so you don’t have to manually format this type of disc.

With these speeds and support for burst data transfer rates of 480 Mbps (USB 2.0) or 400 Mbps (FireWire) Plextor says you can burn a 4.7 GB DVD+R disc in approximately six minutes. This makes for an impressive quick way to archive a good portion of your digital country music or all of those short videos you captured on your digital camera that are currently stored on your PC.

Windows Vista users will be interested to know the Plextor PX-810UF works with this newly minted operating system. The drive also offers users a 2MB buffer and special buffer technology to help prevent buffer errors and allow for more multi-tasking on a connected PC. It is also RoHS compliant weighs just over three pounds and has a one-year warranty.

Those who lack decent DVD burning software will find the include software bundle Plextor offers with this drive has some good programs to choose from. You get Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 for burning media and data to DVD or CD, MyDVD for making DVDs which are more multimedia focused, VideoWave for making better looking videos via editing tools, CinePlayer for playback of DVD-ROM, DVD and VCD discs and BackUp MyPC for backing up individual files and more to DVDs.

More information on the Plextor PX-810UF can be found at Plextor's Web site.