thinking of buying a lightscribe dvd writer but don't know if I should buy a USB or the internal writer. Could anybody tell me if there is anything different between the two. Thank.
Basically they should function the same, model for model. Internals are probably a little faster versus usb depending upon the quality and speed capibility of the connection. Internals should be slightly less expensive as you won't need to purchase the external case, cable, etc. Internals won't be sitting on your table taking up space. Installing the external amounts to plugging it in and feeding the install disk to the computer. Installing the internal should be fairly simple if you have ever opened a computer before. Unplug the old drive and remove mounting screws. Mount new drive, plug it in, and close up. Don't forget to check your pin settings on the back of the drive for master slave positions. Match the settings to the ones on your old drive. I have an XP system and it just recognized the drive with NO problems. No other disk or software required. I did update my firmware and installed Nero (came with burner) later. I really don't even use Nero much at all; any burning software should work for you.
You'd probably want an internal IDE/ATAPI burner anyway as the data rate for USB is slow when burning a dual layer disc. The buffer cache will be problematic with an external drive while burning DL discs. This problem can be solved if eSATA is used instead of USB for an external drive but I don't know of any yet.
i use both and after 1000's of successful burns via USB2.0 i can fully recommend it for burning; i do all my burns at 8x, even with the 'multiple recorders' feature of Nero, ie 2 simultaneous burns, one going on the internal burner, the other going over USB2.0. edit- i don't (and have no intention of) doing Dual Layer so can't vouch for problems over USB2.0 though i don't recall ever reading any reports of problems
There might be problems with some people who use an external USB DVD-RW drive to burn DVD+R DL discs if there is not enough RAM and not enough CPU speed. Again, I am hoping to see an eSATA external drive as this will remidiate these potential problems. Dual-Layer discs require LOTS of RAM and are more CPU intensive than single layer discs so there should not be any problem with burning single layer DVD's.
