Number 207 - August 2000
Purchasing Blank CD's
PC Primer in Quad Cities Computer Society's Apr 2000 Q Bits
    Almost every week during my computer call-in radio show, I will have at least one caller that has a problem comprehending the status of the recordable CD's. Each weekend, people come to me while I'm doing demos'. They want to know if the CD blank disks that they have in their hands are the right ones for copying music CD'S. Usually they are not! Everyone appears to be confused and it is not their fault. If you fall into the confused category, relax, you are in the company of most of the world's computer users.

    The problem extends beyond those that have purchased CD burners so they can crank out their own CD's for their own use. When querying some of these prospective buyers on what type burner they have, I have often been told "I don't have a burner, I'm just going to use my existing CD drive." For this reason, I believe it is time to refer to the CD drives that come in the computers as CD Players (Unless of course they really are recorders/players).

    The entire computer industry is at fault in this oversight and I am not eliminating myself or other computer journalists from partial blame. It is the responsibility of the computer writers to properly inform the users and we have failed. I am about to absolve myself by attempting to put the information as straight as I can, as painlessly as possible. Bear with me, this getting to the edge of being technical, but I will stay in the shallow edge.

    Blank recordable CD's come in two basic flavors CD-R and CD-RW which stand for Recordable and Re-Writeable. The significant difference between them is how they will be used by you the computer user. If you have a recorder, you in all probability have the ability to use either of the available types. You need to use the CD-R blank disks to record information that you want to access/use on other computers. In the case of Music CD's that you are duplicating, you can copy, them onto a CD-R then when you have filled the disk, go through a procedure that "Locks the CD" this means that no additional information can be written to that disk (unless you use the same program that "locked the CD to UNLOCK it") This will allow you to take the copied CD and play it on any working CD player, or if you "Lock" a CD containing just data, you can use it on any computer that has a working CD-player. None of the files on this CD can be eliminated or removed until it is "unlocked".
    Now the CD-RW is another story all together... The CD-RW is intended to be used on one computer. It is re-writeable and is intended to be used and reused over and over. This is the CD that you use to make backups. This disk cannot be taken from the computer and used in a normal CD (player) drive. This is because the disk is not locked. If it was locked, there would be no way to rewrite it again, there would be no way to remove files that you no longer want. You can however take it and use it on another machine that has rewrite capabilities (a CD recorder).

    Those are the basic facts of life as they stand today. You will find a certain amount of wastage in making your own CD's. This is inevitable at this early stage of development. At the present time, I take my ruined recordings that won't make a sound, and make labels for them saying "The best sounds of Rod Stewart" and send them to a Rod Stewart fan (If I can find one) ...You pick your own artist and send a damaged disk to a friend. Aren't you glad you are not on my mailing list?

    Missed a column? Check out the PC PRIMER WEB PAGE rollanet.org/~pcprimer a listing of the last ten weeks of columns. Any questions or comments about this or other columns can be sent by E-mail to pcprimer@RollaNet.org or 16075 State Hwy. F Rolla, MO 65401

TOGGLE Editor's Note:

    For a different approach or viewpoint to understanding all this, you might want to peruse the CD Burner Slide Show presentation currently on our toggle.org website. This slide show was presented at our April 2000 meeting, so you may already remember something about this--but a refresher also might help. Our recollection of the process of closing and opening CD's to data file additions and changes, is a little different than described above depending on the technique used. Take another look at the presentation and you'll see what we mean.

    BTW, to make room on the website for the CD Burner presentation, we had to delete the Firewall Presentation--but not completely. The Text version of each slide is still up and can be found with the site Search tool.
  Number 207 - August 2000