by Gill Boyd
HP Sure Store CD-Writer Plus Drive SetUp
Installing the Hewlett Packard IDE/ATPI 2X CD-RW Drive with a 1 Meg buffer and accompanying software package takes only a few minutes. We installed the drive as Slave on the Secondary Controller to a Toshiba 32x CD-ROM Drive. A Maxtor 7 Gig UDMA Hard Drive as Master and a Zip Drive as Slave occupied the Primary Controller. This proved to be an adequate installation since our EIDE interface allows for 4 IDE Devices. Rather than opting for performance by installing another EIDE-ATAPI Controller we decided to go for the simple solution and just pack it all in since that’s what most people will do.
Although this product is for the consumer market, many features of the included applications will benefit most any user whether corporate or consumer. The package is clearly marketed to the consumer considering the bundled applications. Some of the applications are specifically HP whiles others are “special editions” of other applications. The drive tray is a caddyless one-piece mechanism and more substantial than the “Smart & Friendly” Yamaha 4X CD-RW caddyless tray with flip down door.
Installation consists of 4 CD’s. Three of which require 138 Megs for a full installation. Also includes IE 3.02. Choosing not to install Adobe Type Manager and accompanying postscript fonts will leave you a few fonts shy of the intended installation. We opted not to install those ATM postscript fonts for now. We’ll convert those fonts to true type format afterwards with another application made for the task. HP includes the “Swiss Army Knife” of CDR/CDRW software by Adaptec, “Easy CD Creator Standard”. The Standard is very close to the “Deluxe” version, which is available separately but not needed by most of us.
Uses include – Backing up data, sharing information and or music and as a long-term storage solution for data files. CDR/CDRW’s offer the CD universal format so commonly found today. Almost everyone has a CD-ROM drive! Faster and higher capacities are always preferable. As we stress @ the “Build or Buy A PC” SIG – Compatibility, upgradeability and portability. CD-R/CD-RW technology achieves those goals admirably.
Included Software Bundle.
Very well organized, one program group on the Win95 Start Menu under “HP Sure Store CD-Writer Plus”.
Last of 4 CD’s, Adaptec Easy CD Creator Standard, runs as a separate installation from previous 3 CD Discs, which run in succession as discs 1 through 3. Installs separate menu structure. Not quite sure why they included Adaptec software on a separate disc since it’s built in to the HP Suite. This seems redundant. The HP applications menu includes everything you’ll need. In fact, you’re ready to start creating CD content without installing the last 4th CD Disc.
HP Sure Store CD-Writer Plus menu structure includes the following sub-menu’s: Corel Print House Magic, HP Simple Trax, PaperMaster, PhotoDeluxe, Ritz Photo Manager, Symantec Norton AntiVirus and Tools and Information plus the following applications: Copy CD’s, Make data CD’s, Make Inserts & Labels & Make music CD’s. The later applications are all a part of Adaptec Easy CD Creator Standard.
Corel Print House Magic is self-explanatory. Be prepared for all of your graphics files being associated with this application whether you like it or not! This application is slow to load if you’re only viewing graphic files like wallpaper and such. PaperMaster, not up to par with Xerox Pagis Pro or my favorite document management application, Visioneer PaperPort Deluxe! Seems everyone these days includes a version of Adobe Photo Deluxe and Storm Easy Photo software. Ritz Camera Photo Manager is a new and refreshing twist for creating photo albums to catalogue, manage and view digital photos. The “Tools and Information” menu points the way to Adobe PDF (Portable Document File) help files and yes, the Adobe Acrobat Reader ver. 3.01 comes in the package as well. The Adaptec Easy CD-RW Eraser is buried here too.
Be sure to look into those help files. Especially under the sub-menu “Tools and Information / User Reference” for User’s Guide Online. Great help file to walk a novice through understanding how to create and use a CD-RW Drive. You’ll find it, eventually!
HP Simple Trax was most intriguing since it made no sense and placed several icons in odd places from one icon under “My Computer” to the two icons on the “DeskTop”. HP Simple Trax could prove to be very useful in cataloguing created CD data information. Here’s a hint to HP…What about an upgrade path for HP Simple Trax later? Don’t you just hate to get attached to some favorite utility only to find out next year it does not exist! This looks like one of those applications. HP Simple Trax when used protects your data by copying data files and folders to a CD and saves information about those files in a data base on the hard drive. Easy file retrieval later? It’s possible. HP Simple Trax allows us to “see” the files and folders on our CD’s without placing CD disc in the CD-RW drive. The application will ask for the specific disc containing the specified data. Hope they maintain this one!
Adaptec Easy CD Creator Standard
Adaptec Easy CD Creator Standard and Adaptec Easy CD Creator Deluxe are very similar. The way HP has packaged the product, the only Adaptec features missing are CD Spin Doctor for audio CD’s and a property sheet on what’s called Easy-CD Audio, a.k.a. a feature set of Adaptec Easy CD Creator. The “Adaptec Easy CD Creator” interface in the “Deluxe” version includes a property sheet for Data CD Layout. If you haven’t seen the difference, you wont miss it! Yes. It may sound confusing; it’s really not though.
For The Curious – The Deluxe Difference
Adaptec Easy CD Creator Deluxe advanced features include the following: Photo PCD – Picture CD Creator, for the creation of Kodak Photo CD’s; Session Selector – Allows choosing and accessing other recorded sessions on a multisession CD disc. A very basic Sound Editor and Video CD Creator. Video CD Creator creates a video CD layout file containing the play items and play sequences. It’s for playback of MPEG Files on video CD players, Compact Disc-Interactive (CD-I) players or your Computer CD player!).
Configuring Discs For Use with Adaptec DirectCD –
First, access Direct CD Wizard on Task Bar to prepare discs. This is the easiest way to copy files to a CD. An extra, nice touch – Adaptec DirectCD is added to the “Send To” menu. Accessible by “Right” clicking on a file or folder, selecting “Send To” and selecting “DirectCD Drive” (CD-R/CD-RW Drive Letter).
While copying files from the Hard Drive to a CD-R Disc using Adaptec DirectCD, we had a few files whose names were too long to allow access later from the new CD we were creating required shortening their respective names. Win95 files (on the hard drive) can have long file names of 256 characters (not including the 3-character file extension name). Whereas files copied to a CDR/CDRW can only have file name of 60 characters. Interesting technology, cumbersome though not impossible to deal with. The file name below is offered as an example.
A dialogue box popped up stating the following and handled accordingly below.
Warning: file name is too long. The following file name is too long to be read from a regular CD-ROM drive, please type a new name for it.
New name that will be read from a regular CD-ROM drive: 3 Choices Offered: Change All; Change; Cancel. Then, “New name that will be read from a regular CD-ROM drive.”
Original Location: G:\MEDIA\Midi_InterNet
Original Name: Meat Loaf - You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night).mid
Suggested Name: Meat Loaf - You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Ho~D70.mid
Accepted Name: Meat Loaf - You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth.mid
Due to the new technology introduced by DirectCD, these discs will only be readable under Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 2.
The HP has everything and more to create most CD’s. No buffer underruns encountered on a PII-266 with 64 Megs of Ram. We’d like to see a Hewlett Packard 4X SCSI CD-RW. A faster drive with a faster interface. That’s why we consider this to be a consumer level product.
Faster is always better!
Gill Boyd is a HAL-PC Director and serves as VP Programs as well as SIG leader of the How to Bulid or Buy a PC SIG. He can be reached at gboyd@hal-pc.org
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