- Introduction

is one of those companies that have chosen to support the USB 2.0 interface, and take advantage of all those the interface can offer regarding the performance and the easiness of installation. As it is well known, USB 2.0 has a raw data rate at 480Mbps, and it is rated 40 times faster than its predecessor interface, USB 1.1, which tops at 12Mbps. We have already tested the Teac CD-W280PU external CD-RW drive, which was the Japanese version of the drive we currently have in our hands. Teac CD-W28PU is the drive contained in the European retail package and supports 8x CDR writing, 8x CD-RW writing and 24x reading speed. Competition by Plextor, CyQve and other manufacturers is already established and we couldn't resist to a straight performance comparison.

- Package

The European retail package contains the CD-W28PU drive unit, the AC adapter, the USB interface cable, an installation floppy disc, Nero Burning Rom v.5.5 writing software, an information CD-ROM with manuals and specifications, and the user's manual. The package is priced at $225.

As you can see in the picture, the drive has basically a metallic gray color. It is manual top loading / manual eject and on the top you will find the eject button, the power/busy indicator led, which indicates the status and the operation states of the drive, and the write indicator led, which shows the write status of the drive. On the left side of the drive there is the 3.5mm line output jack for analog audio. On the right side there is DC-IN connector, in which is connected the provided dedicated AC adapter.

Teac CD-W28PU weights only 450 g and its dimensions are 140 x 15 x 146 mm (WxHxD). The drive supports 8x writing speed, 24x CAV cd-r reading speed, and 8x CLV cd-rw reading speed. TEAC standard gives the drive a 110 msec access time (random stroke).

- Installation

The drive was installed through the package included USB 2.0 cable to the PC card and was powered by the provided AC adapter. Note that the drive can also be connected through the USB 1.1 interface, but with a lower reading/writing performance. Teac CD-W28PU was identified as "TEAC CD-W28E". As Nero reports, the drive supports 8x writing speed, buffer underrun protection, cd-text, DAO, and has a 2 MB buffer although Nero reports only 1280 KB. On the other hand, Teac CD-W28PU does not support the overburning function. The drive is a December 2001 model and the firmware installed was vU1.B1