Looking to buy some media from office depot and they only have Imation, Memorex and Maxell. The 1st two are bad from what I read but how about Maxell??
Well, I can only tell you from my experience with them. I bought two of the Maxell CD-R Pro 700 mb 25 packs (rated at up to 40x speed) while on sale at Office Depot about 2 months ago. Most of them gave me errors. I'm not sure if it's my burning software (Nero) or if it was the discs, but I wasn't too impressed with them. This happened with both 25 packs. Maybe others had luck with them, but I haven't so far. I may try them again to see if it was just an isolated bad batch, but Fuji seems to work well for me. Never tried Imation or Memorex.
I can't speak for Maxell but I would definitely stay away from Imation and while I've never had a problem writing Memorex discs, but when I used to use Memorex all the time I noticed that there are some issues with some drives reading them. Since I found a local store that sells 100 Verbatim DataLife Plus discs for $30 I dont' buy anything else.
Well i bought a pack of Maxell CD-R 800XL (16x rated) a while back when i was in need of some cds quickly and i've not had a single problem writing at 48x. I'm half way through the pack now and i'd definitely have them again from the point of view of burning/reading/using them. Whether they will blow up in a few months or just turn into a troup of wandering mongooses and dance the Bolero on top of my cd player -- well i just don't know...
I've burned quite a bit with Maxell discs, and never had any problems. Of course, I've never had any problems with any cd-r discs, and it's not like I've got a great burner. Older 16x were made by Acer (at least some 16x that I bought), but newer 40x versions of Maxell cd-r discs are: ATIP: 97m 15s 17f Disc Manufacturer: Ritek Co. Reflective layer: Dye (Short strategy; e.g. Phthalocyanine) Media type: CD-Recordable Recording Speeds: min. unknown - max. unknown nominal Capacity: 702.82MB (79m 59s 70f / LBA: 359845) Not bad, apparently.
Maxell are typically good. I would definitely stay away from Memorex though... big dissapointment. Imation seems to be hit and miss.. some packs are extremely good yet others are "okay" to "not so good"
ATIPs, ATIPs, ATIPs! "Maxell good, Memorex bad" doesn't give enough information as neither of these companies manufacture their discs. Maxell has recently been using high quality providers and therefore it's a fairly safe buy. Memorex on the other hand has been using a lot of CMC, which is a hit or miss. So do like timcupery is doing, and always post your ATIP.
Errrr sorry boss.... I will as soon as i get my other comp working (the ATIP is logged on the other machine) :S
