I will update this with images later, I just wanna say that I received my Pioneer DVR-KD08 drive today along with a 500GB WD Scorpio Blue, and I must say, it rocks! No more media errors (it is a newer drive after all), a cooler orange LED, the fact that it’s a Pioneer drive (high quality implied here, just check cdfreaks.com), quieter, less vibration. And alternate.de shipped it pretty quickly, too, I ordered it only on Thursday, and it arrived on Monday afternoon.

Of course, it wins hands down when compared to a drive that doesn’t even work, but hey, I’m just real glad to have a working DVD drive again! Tomorrow once my exam’s over, I’ll start installing Windows XP on this laptop (yes, I am switching back to XP…. again, I really need to make up my mind), using the free Windows XP I got from the uni (oh baby) and finally start my downloading dynasty again, unencumbered by small hard drives! If there’s one thing I hate more than thrashing (as in RAM swapped to HDD, not thrashing by my parents), it’s low hard drive space.

Well anyway back to studying for the exam. I don’t have high hopes…

EDIT: It seems laptop optical drives seem to crap out near their top speeds when writing to dual layer DVD+R media, even my high quality Verbatim MKM-003-00 expensive crap that I’ve already wasted 4 discs of. Remember, always burn dual layer media slowly! It may take an hour, but at least it won’t be wasted (as well as the disc)!