Plextor unveils DVD+/-, R/RW CD-RW drive

Reg Kit Watch

Optical

Plextor has introduced an optical drive to burn DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW and CD-R/RW discs.

The PX-708A supports 8x DVD+R, 4x DVD-R, 4x DVD+RW, 2x DVD-RW, 40x CD-R and 24x CD-RW burning. Its reads CDs at 40x max. and DVDs at 12x max.

The drive contains 2MB of data cache and offers a burst transfer rate of 33MBps, allowing a full 4.7GB DVD+R disc to be burned in around eight minutes. The drive ships with an ATA/ATAPI-5 (EIDE) interface.

The PX-708A will ship in the US next month for around $299.

Notebook

eMachines has hopped into the wireless-enabled notebook market with the M5310, a 15.4in machine with built-in 802.11g WLAN support.

The notebook is based on AMD's Athlon XP 2400+ chip and ships with 512MB of DDR SDRAM and a 40GB hard drive. Optical storage comes courtesy of a DVD/CD-RW combo drive offering 8x DVD reading and 24x/10x/24x CD performance. Graphics are integrated into the machine's host chipset, an ATI Radeon IGP 320M.

The M5310's Wi-Fi support is provided by a Broadcom 54g chipset. There's 10/100 wired Ethernet, and users can dial in using the built-in 57Kbps modem. Further connectivity is provided by the three USB 2.0 ports and single 1394 connector.

The 2.9kg (6.5lbs) notebook is available now in the US for $1199. ®