Archos DExDVD-RW

In the past six months, recordable DVD drives have dropped enough in price to justify consideration.

The Archos DExDVD-RW is still quite expensive at £270, but allows you to store almost seven times more information on one DVD than on a 700MB CD-R.

This can be in the form of documents, images and audio files but also Mpeg-2 video, which is the same as that used on DVD movies.

This means that you can create your own DVD movies or DVD photo-slide shows from your image collection. To aid this, the drive comes with a cut-down version of Roxio's VideoWave Movie Creator and Easy CD Creator Basic.

The Archos player supports the DVD-RW format, which is one of the better-supported formats in the still-murky world of DVD creation.

The DExDVD-RW uses a USB 2 connection for transferring data, so make sure your PC has a USB 2 port before you plump for one.

Other than that, all you need do is plug it in and Windows XP will automatically recognise it as a recordable DVD drive and complete the install.

However, the maximum write speed for DVD is double-speed, so writing a full 4.7GB DVD disc takes from around 30 minutes.

Contact: Archos 01793 441510
www.archos.com