Most of us are familiar with the CD-ROM drive in it's use as an audio playback device. Just as audio CD's are the most popular form of music playback, computer CD's are now the defacto form of loading and retrieving computer programs and Files. CD-ROM drives, aside from the typical stand-alone have evolved and branched into various devices that can read data CD's and perform other tasks besides.

CD-ROM- drives are necessary today for most programs. Just about any program you buy in the store will come in CD form. That being said the drives are pretty cheap and even the slowest of the current models are fast enough for most purposes. If you use your CD for downloading and copying audio files than you might want to opt for a faster model.

CD-ROM- drives are necessary today for most programs. Just about any program you buy in the store will come in CD form. That being said the drives are pretty cheap and even the slowest of the current models are fast enough for most purposes. If you use your CD for downloading and copying audio files than you might want to opt for a faster model.

CD-R/RW- (which stands for Recordable / ReWritable) drives (aka burners, writers) allow a user to create their own CDs of audio and/or data. These drives are great for backup purposes (backup your computer's hard drive or backup your purchased CDs) and for creating your own audio CD compilations (not to mention other things like home movies, multimedia presentations, etc.). These are the important things to look for when purchasing a CDRW.

• X RATING-Ahhh the all important X factor. The higher the X rating, the faster your CDRW will write to the CD. 8x or 12x burners are a good speed to look for with the speedier 16x drives going for hefty premium.

• There is also the read rating to consider. A CDRW can also act as an ordinary CD-ROM drive, the read speed gives you the speed at which it reads ordinary disks to the computer.

• REWRITE this is going to be a slower number. It is the speed at which the drive can burn onto special rewriteable CD's.

• Cache-This is a type of memory stored in your CDRW's memory. It acts as a buffer and allows your burner to transfer the data in a consistent manner. Unless you want lots of corrupted and aborted copies make sure your CDRW has at least 2MB of cache memo

DVD-ROM-These are a new type of drive that hold about six times as much data as CD-ROM drives. The most popular use for DVD's right now is to watch movies*. The DVD format allows for much higher resolution digital recordings that look much clearer than VCR recordings. DVD's (Digital Video Disks) look similar to and are the same size as CD's (Compact Disks). DVD drives are backwards compatible meaning they can also read CD-ROM drives, so you don't usually need a separate CD-ROM drive. Some companies even make CD burner drives that will also read DVDs (all in one). DVD recordable drives are available, allowing for much more data to be placed on a single disk, but they are very expensive.

*In order to watch movies with your DVD drive you will need either a decoder card or decoder software. Most newer computer don't need a dedicated decoder card and decoder software should be fine.