The asus external optical USB drive is slim and styled well, and quite literally brings its own stand to the show. It differentiates itself from other .similar drives with a stand that lets you place it vertically to save desk space and you can choose color between black or white. It reads all types of CD/DVDs, but writes to them slower than internal ones, which isn't unusual since it is limited by the USB interface in terms of how much power it can draw.

The drive is automatically recognized by Windows, and needs no drivers to be installed for its operation. The bundled CD includes a firmware update program, Asus' Turbo Engine software. The bundled CyberLink Power2Go software for writing discs provides all the basic functionality you might be accustomed to (like Nero Burning-ROM).

Power2Go also provides for password-protected encryption of a disc you burn (fully or partially). Read speed of DVDs is claimed to be 8x, and we measured an actual average of 6.5x. Dual-Layer DVDs were slower at 5x for both read and write. You'd most commonly encounter DVD-R (single-layer blank discs) which were written to at an average of 6.1x. A Windows 7 install from a DVD proceeded at half the speed seen in desktop optical drives. We saw an average of 20x while reading and writing to CD-R discs. These are in line with expectations since speed hits the maximum only in the outermost tracks of a disc.

It is targeted at usage with Netbooks (mini-notebooks without an optical drive) and useful if the optical drive is mal-functioning on a desktop/laptop.

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