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The Que! Fire 40x/12x/48x CD-RW Drive from QPS Inc. is reviewed. It is a drive made with Macs in mind - with its rounded corners and semi-opaque graphite case, it belongs next to an iMac. The Que! Drive comes with a FireWire 1394 interface and bundled with Discribe 5.0.15 for OS 9.x and OS X. The Que! Fire CD-RW drive itself is a terrific unit - sturdy, solid, and reliable. But until it comes with a better software bundle, Mac users should think long and hard before taking the 40X plunge with this drive.
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I don't ask for much. A good night's sleep, a hot cup of coffee, and a CD burner that makes discs quickly and reliably. As a Macintosh user, though (a 400mHz slot-loading iMac running OS 9.2, to be precise), that last one has not been so easy to find. Achieving the delicate balance of the burner, software, and system configuration can take weeks of trial-and-error, hand-wringing, and gnashing of teeth. Which means that when we Apple acolytes find a combination that works, we tend to stick with it and switch only under extreme duress. Or a review assignment that brings with it the promise of 40X burns; even Mac users have a need for speed, but that need's gone unrecognized too long.
That's what it took to get me to leave behind my trusty iTunes for the uncertainty of Charismac's Discribe, which, unlike Apple's own software, is compatible with QPS' new Que! Fire 40X/12X/48X FireWire external CD-RW drive. Funny thing is, it's a drive made with Macs in mind (and iTunes is compatible with QPS' other drives, so 40X compatibility is likely just around the corner)-with its rounded corners and semi-opaque graphite case, it belongs next to an iMac. And with Discribe, it's a natural match.
Or at least it should be. The Que! Drive comes with a FireWire 1394 interface and bundled with Discribe 5.0.15 for OS 9.x and OS X. The thing is, Discribe plain and simple doesn't work, at least not reliably and certainly not predictably. Ever a fan of the underdog-- in a world dominated by the Roxio Toast juggernaut, the OS-embedded iTunes-I wanted to like it. But no dice. When Discribe finally recognized the drive that it came bundled with-only after numerous emails to Charismac technical support and the disabling of all other FireWire extensions save for the Mac system's necessary enabler and support files-Discribe burned successfully on only 2 of 13 attempts, both data discs recorded at 4X. Audio discs and disc copies failed in both write mode and test mode at 4X, 12X, 24X, and 40X; the CPU froze, usually two-thirds of the way through a burn, and I had to do a complete reboot. Charismac tech support was unable to solve the problem, leaving me with many coasters and no answers about Discribe's inability to complete a successful burn of anything but the most basic data disc.
So does that mean that 40X burns are still just beyond the reach of us Mac users? Not if you're willing to plunk down almost $100 for Roxio's Toast Titanium 5.0, which is still the gold standard for Macintosh CD creation. What's it got that iTunes doesn't (assuming that iTunes comes out with a version compatible with this latest Que! drive)? Disc copying on-the-fly, for one thing; why the software developers at Apple haven't yet put disc-to-disc capability into iTunes is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Macintosh universe, especially since FireWire opened the door to high-speed burning on external drives. That one thing's big enough to set Toast apart, though; ripping tunes to MP3s or AIFFs is just so 2001, not to mention so time-consuming. And Toast lets the Que! Fire live up to its 40X potential, copying 78-minute music CDs in less than three minutes. I made more than 30 copies, all from different sources, without a single "write fail" error; the unit's buffer underrun protection worked like a charm. What's more, the unit burned at 40X both on media rated for that speed, like Verbatim's DataLife Plus and Plextor's high-speed discs, as well as on media supposedly only rated to 32X from TDK. Data and audio discs burned from source files on the hard drive were completed with equal aplomb, and the unit's 12X CD-RW capability makes even that tedious task less of a time drain, though CD-Rs are available at such a low price that most people just burn another disc rather than writing over an existing one.
Even though FireWire lacks USB's hot-swappability (so you've got to power down before you hook it up to the Mac), the Que! Fire is pretty much a plug-n-- play unit. It comes with a tough vinyl-and-nylon carrying case. With its shoulder strap and pockets for power and FireWire cables (not to mention a pouch that will hold at least a couple discs), it's easy to picture the unit's portability. In fact, the drive and its carrying case are among the most attractive I've seen. And its performance with Toast was impeccable.
But that's the rub, isn't it? If you plunk down nearly $300 for a CD-RW drive, who wants to then have to pay for separate software? Discribe's always been a dicey bit of software-not intuitive to navigate, testy about recognizing drives, and completely unpredictable about successfully burning discs. So it's a bit of a mystery why QPS would still choose it to bundle with the company's showpiece drive. (PC users get to use Ahead's Nero mastering software and InCD packet-- writing package; they can also choose the internal ATAPI model or the USB 2.0 unit, both of which are cheaper than the FireWire model.) I suppose the bigger mystery is why there aren't more good software packages available for Macintosh at all, but that's getting beyond the scope of this review.
The Que! Fire CD-RW drive itself is a terrific unit-sturdy, solid, and reliable. But until it comes with a better software bundle (or, at the very least, Apple makes iTunes compatible), Mac users should think long and hard before taking the 40X plunge with this drive. If you've got Toast, though, you can enjoy that hot cup of coffee even more while this drive churns out disc after disc.
Enic Schumacher-Rasmussen is assistant editor of EMedia magazine.
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Copyright Online, Incorporated Jul 2002