DVD Dual
DVD writing technology has finally made its way to the masses, with major PC makers pushing DVD writers as an optional upgrade or even standard issue in some of their product lines. It’s a technology that’s been catching on in the PC industry and consumer electronics market for some time. Fueled with ever increasing needs for larger portable storage devices, technology such as Zip drives, CDs and static state flash drives simply just can’t measure up against the larger storage solution provided by the DVD technology. In addition, DVD offers the consumer a more attractive capacity/price ratio. Once perceived as a lavish gadget for the more well-to-do community, due to its sky-high price a couple of years back, the price of DVD writers today has declined to a more affordable range where the technology isn’t exclusively for the fortunate few anymore.
Enter Gigabyte (a popular brand name borned in Taiwan), a reputable company that has grown from strength to strength by producing mainboards at a competitive price, and by bringing innovations such as the world’s first Dual BIOS mainboard to the desktop PC market. In order to keep pace with the rest of its competitors, it has widen its product range in a bid to position itself as a total IT product provider on a global scale. Their latest optical offering, the GO-W0404A, happens to be a dual format DVD writer, which we’ll be reviewing today.
Interestingly enough, Gigabyte has only manufactured one model of each type of optical drive standard, namely the CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW and the latest DVD Dual format writer reviewed today. All of which are internally mounted drives. For your information, there are two main DVD writing standards available today, the –R/RW and +R/RW formats. Neither format has been finalized as the industry DVD writing standard to date. So, to cater to both the different market segment, Gigabyte has opt to manufacture a Dual Format DVD writer just so that consumers need not lose sleep about making a purchase that will go obsolete - should either one format be dropped in the future.
