MaximumPC 2005 03

Reviews

Western Digital Passport 40GB

You might want to pass on this one

 MA XIMUMPC MARCH 200 5

N

ow that Western Digital is fabricating 2.5-inch notebook drives, it’s

only natural the company would go on to drop these small suckers

into rubberized cases and wade into the hotly contested portable-

storage market. The specimen we reviewed is a 40GB model, but an

80-gigger is also available, and both sport a whisper-quiet, power-saving

rotational velocity of 5400rpm along with a quaint 2MB buffer.

The top of the drive’s enclosure is stainless steel, while the sides and

underbelly are covered entirely in rubber, providing impact absorption as

well as a non-slip surface for use on your desktop. A solitary blue light

winks repeatedly during drive access, and remains on when the drive is

receiving power.

The Passport is bus-powered via a single USB connection (cable

included), as opposed to the two-headed USB cables used by many of

the drives we’ve reviewed in the past. This is unfortunate, because USB

drives don’t always grab enough juice from a single USB port, and a two-

headed cable grants extra power. To wit, there were two occasions dur-

ing testing when the Passport failed to operate: when plugged into a USB

extension cable and, more surprisingly, when connected to a powered

USB hub—something we haven’t experienced with any other USB drive.

The Passport does include an AC power jack for occasions that require

added oomph, but not a power cable. That has to be purchased separate-

ly—a big disappointment, as far as we’re concerned. On the brighter side,

Decent performance and capacity.

GIGABYTES

BUG BITES

Wouldn’t work on powered USB hubs; clay-brick

styling; pricey.

$200 ($250 for 80GB), http://www.wdc.com

MA XIMUMPCVERDICT 6

The Passport’s bland styling,

finicky performance, and high

price tag left us shaking our heads.

we had no trouble getting the

drive to work on front- or rear-

mounted USB ports, or notebook

USB ports.

In the end, Western Digital’s

Passport seems rugged and is

dead quiet, but we’re loath to

recommend it given its finicky

power performance and middle-

of-the-road attributes.

—JOSH NOREM

NEC ND-3500A DVD Burner

Fast is a blast, and the price is nice

W

hen a student of the University of California, Berkeley decided

to start walking around campus in the buff, the reaction from

other students was fairly mild. They called him the “Naked

Guy,” and his 15 minutes came and went. But we think even the most

open-minded undergrad would be shocked by this: A $99 dual-format

DVD burner that writes to double-layer media at 4x. Now that’s kooky!

Although 4x DVD+R DL media isn’t available yet, the ND-3500A can

write to Verbatim 2.4x double-layer media at 4x, just like Pioneer’s DVR-

A08. At this speed, we packed a double-layer disc with 8.3GB of data in

27:17 (min:sec), just 13 seconds longer than it took the DVR-A08. Writing

to 16x DVD+R media, however, exposed NEC’s fiery little demon, beating

the DVR-A08 by more than a minute and a half at 5:51 (min:sec). Holy

frijole—a spectacular new record!

NEC boasts that the ND-3500A can reach speeds “up to” 16x using

8x media, too; but in our experience, this worked with only one out of

four discs from our prized stash of Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD+Rs. This was a

big disappointment, because the feature—implemented so well on most

Plextor drives—enables you to get the best performance from your drive

without having to spend a fortune on top-speed media.

It’s not the quietest drive in the world—it’s certainly not as eerily

silent as Pioneer’s 4x double-layer burner—but neither is it intolerably

loud, even during high-speed digital-audio extraction. Seek times of

117ms for random and 255ms for full stroke are unextraordinary, and our

tests showed an unusually high CPU utilization—a drag for anyone with

a severely aged system.

Sadly, the ND-3500A is burdened by Ulead’s MovieFactory 3, which,

once again, gave us headaches in the form of inexplicable crashes;

what’s worse, this coaster-ware cost us money when burns failed and

discs were ruined. Although

we’re far more concerned with

the hardware than the software

bundled with it, we severely

punished Pioneer for bundling

MovieFactory with its DVR-

A08XLTK because the software

can cost hapless users serious

amounts of cash. We’re being

only slightly easier on NEC

because of the ND-3500A’s

breathtaking price.

—LOGAN DECKER

Insanely cheap, extremely fast 16x DVD+R speed,

and writes to 2.4x DVD+R DL media at 4x.

HAROLD AND KUMAR

NICOLE AND PARIS

Spotty support for burning single-layer discs at

speeds higher than rated, ho-hum access times,

and bad software.

$99, http://www.necsam.com

MA XIMUMPCVERDICT 8

NEC sets a new speed record for DVD burning, and

a new low for DVD-burner pricing.

3.5“ 5.5“