|
12x speed is nice, but you need the discs to go with it. When 8x drives came out, it took some 2 months for the discs to follow. Only now are they arriving. Same thing with 12x speeds: the drives are here, but there are no discs.
I've read that 16x dvd-rewriters are coming soon, and higher speeds are to be expected.
BUT... at the moment, there's a new type of writer, which is able to write dual-layer discs (IF they're ever available). This allows you to write 8.5 gigs of data to an appropriate disc (at 2.4x speed). This speed will of course increase soon. I think these dics are dvd-r types, so we'll probably see a dual-layer dvd+r too... just to annoy us, of course.
In the near future, we'll see the emergence of Blue-ray, which uses a blue laser to achieve much higher data density, and will be able to fit 10, 20 or more gigs on one disc.
Now, at the moment, dvd+r is simply a better standard than the older dvd-r, and there can be only two reasons to write dvd-r. 1) They might be cheaper where you live, and 2) you may own a dvd-player that only reads dvd-r. Apart from that, dvd-r is pretty much a slower alternative.
Short version: get either a cheap 8x dvd+/-rw from a good brand, or get a cheap 12x dvd+/-rw from a good brand, or get a slightly more expensive (and sometimes experimental) dual-layer burner. Don't bother waiting for that next speed increase, because it won't matter that much. At 4x speeds, a dvd takes 16 minutes to burn, at 8x speeds, some 8 minutes. At 12x speeds, it takes 6 or 7 minutes... Is that speed increase *really* important to you?
|