My new DVD burner arrived the other day and now it’s sucessfully installed in it’s new home. I opted for the NEC 3520-A. It’s a 16x DL burner and got highmarks from both AnandTech and Toms Hardware. It was also half the price of the Plextor I wanted. I realize the Plextor is the Porche of optical drives, but $150 for a DVD burner when all the others are $50-60. Come on guys, that’s not right.

Regardless, it’s a sweet drive. I’ve already test burnt a half dozen things. I had 8x disks that burnt a full 4.7G in about 6 minutes. The 4x disks I had averages about 12-14 minutes. That’s not shabby. It’s also extemely quite. I didn’t realize it was burning the first time until the light started blinking.

I’ve also installed the old drive in my 2nd machine. It’s hard drive will be formatted shortly and I’ll probably install my old TV tuner card in it and turn it into a media PC. I might even install Media Center Edition on it if I get bored. It’ll fit nicely into my entertainment center. I already have a wireless mouse and the appropriate AV cables to hook everything up. All I need is to find my video breakout box with the svideo inputs. It’s somewhere in the closet. After that it would just be a matter of getting the video drivers to display correctly on the TV. It could be cool.

In non-computer news, we’re going to another Aeros hockey game tonight. I’m not sure who they’re playing, not that it matters anyway. The game starts around 7:00.

I’ve also got the links at the top of the page fixed and should be linked to content shortly. Also, “Recent Links” is installed and you can see it in action over to the right side of the page beneith the archives and links. It’s a updatable list of links I find as I’m browsing around. I’m working on adding text descriptions to each link so it’ll be a little easier to figure out what they are. If you’re look at them in IE, the font is apparently larger and italic. I have no idea why. In Firefox it’s the same font as the links above it and its the same size. Not that it looks bad in IE, it just doesn’t look as it should. Not that I care how things look in IE, but it’s text for heaven’s sake, you’d figure it could at least get that right. Stupid IE.