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It is not necessarily noteworthy that the HP CID Writer Plus M820e comes with two pieces of media, a CD-R disc and a CO-RW disc. What is noteworthy is that this new portable CD-RW drive is no higher, wider, or longer that those two discs in jewelcases stacked on top of one another. Well, I exaggerate, but not by much. Take two jewel cases and stack them together; imagine a CD-RW drive that is 1/8 of an inch wider, 3/16 of an inch taller. and 7/16 of an inch deeper and you get the picture. Now try putting that picture in your pocket because it will fit there, too.
Long desired by CD-R enthusiasts who want or need to write discs on the road, but are scared away by the thought of lugging around a 5.25-inch SCSI or parallel drive in an external case with their laptop, the time for portable recording has finally come. And as a portable peripheral, the HIP M820e recorder does not disappoint.
unpacking
The HP drive kit includes the drive, a power supply, a SCSI PC Card for laptop connection, a SCSI cable, headphones, and one piece each of CD-R and CD-RW media. Software included with the 4x4x20 drive consists of a driver diskette, and a software installation CD containing Adaptec's Easy CD Creator 3.5 and Direct CD 2.5. For documentation, HP includes manuals for both Direct CD and Creator (in eight languages-his thing gets around). There is also a quick start setup poster, with step-by-step setup instructions that are understandable, typical of HP's commitment to easy installations of its products.
It is easy to install the recorder, even on a laptop without a CD-ROM drive, since the driver diskette installs the software necessary to access the drive. The diskette layout is a little confusing, with immediately apparent subdirectories for NT and DOS, but none for Windows 95 and 98. These Windows drivers are in the root directory and resolving that minute or two's worth of confusion, you can have the drive up and running in a couple of minutes more.
Installing the recording and packet-writing software is easy, too. The installation CD is autorun-enabled and the Macromedia menu is easy to navigate and use, although the "happy music" that...