Introduction

It's no secret that optical storage is a big business and if you're a heavy Internet user running on broadband, a movie buff or simply someone in the design industry, chances that you already own or intend to get yourself a DVD writer in the near future are very high. Large storage capacity and portability of DVDs are the two elements behind a worldwide surge in demand of these optical drives. Think of it as a rerun, in DVD version, of the days when CD writers first entered our lives, offering superior storage capacity over floppy and Zip drives. Back to where we are now, DVD write speeds are now at the peak of maturity with prices of both drive and media dropping and stabilizing at the mainstream range, reliable DVD storage is at last within the means of the masses.


Even though MSI was a little late in setting up a production plant for manufacturing CD based optical drives, the few models churned out by the plant within its first year of operation have had great success. As with every manufacturer, MSI is hoping this fine spell would be brought over to their latest DVD writer, the DR16-B. This 16x Dual Format Double-Layer DVD writer possesses the fastest burn speed for DVD±R media, supports 4x DVD±RW writing and has a speedy 16x DVD-ROM read speed. CD users are not neglected and the write speed for CD-R and CD-RW is at 40x and 24x respectively; though these specifications are no longer the fastest around anymore, they should suffice nonetheless.