Plextor is undoubtedly one of today’s
leaders in the optical drive market. Founded in 1985
(formally known as Texel), the company currently employees
over 4,000 people throughout the world, selling a plethora
of different optical drives and digital video converters. In
my past reviews, Plextor drives have always adorned close to
top honors because of their attention to quality, bundled
software, and overall performance. This latest offering is
no exception, the PX-716A is a dual layer DVD drive that can
pretty much read or write anything you throw at it, minus
DVD-RAM.
I did not encounter any
problems whatsoever with installing this drive. The software
included with the drive was very straightforward, and
instructions supplied were sufficient (we will briefly touch
on the software bundles later on this article).
The drive has a very
attractive look, following the sleek lines of its
predecessors. The front panel of the unit has a very small
activity light, and a small manual access hole up front. I
was happy to find a black face plate included, and
installing the plate was quite easy. Drive construction
seemed solid, the tray was sturdy, and did not require any
special attention for quick disk swaps.
Roxio Easy Media Creator 7 –
award winning software suite which contains
full-featured photo, video, music, burning, and
authoring applications for Windows XP/2000 only.
Plex Tools –
includes Plextor features like SilentMode, GigaRec,
VariRec, and Secure Recording
Dantz Retrospect –
30 trial version of this back-up utility
