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Que! Fire 16x 10x 40x CD-RW Drive Review
How far we've come from lowly floppy drive in less than three years. Yes, it was in May, 1998 that Steve Jobs confounded the computing world by introducing the first Macintosh ever without a floppy drive -- the iMac, which wouldn't actually reach the hands of consumers until three months later. The WallStreet PowerBook, which had its consumer release at the same time the iMac was announced, also defied convention by making the expansion a floppy drive optional. Of course the naysayers scoffed. People wouldn't buy a computer without a floppy drive, they said. They were wrong. Now it seems quaint that Wintel boxes still come with floppy drives. Several contenders have stepped up to the plate in hopes of replacing the floppy as the removable media and file transfer standard. Some, like Iomega's Zip drive, are still with us. Others, like SyQuest's EZ Flyer (and SyQuest), fell by the wayside. Currently, the top-seed contender is CD-RW. Apple, after leading the parade away from the antiquated floppy, took a wrong turn by betting on non-recordable DVD drives, while the PC orbit embraced CD-R and CD-RW. The new, CD-RW equipped Power Macs, Cubes, and iMacs introduced in Tokyo last month have Apple back on track with built-in CD-RW drives. However, for the vast installed base of pre-Tokyo 2001 Macs, all PowerBooks, iBooks, and current low-end Cubes and iMacs, users who want CD-R or CD-RW, capability must look to third-party vendors, of which there are no shortage. You can get recordable CD drives with SCSI, USB, and most recently, FireWire connectivity, and arguably, the current king of the hill in terms of speed is the Que! Fire 16x 10x 40x CD-RW FireWire drive from QPS Inc.. The three speed numbers refer to CD recording (16x), CD rewriting (10x), and CD maximum read (40x). 
The Que! Fire 16x 10x 40x CD-RW drive has just started shipping, but I have been testing a preview machine for three weeks now, and I can confirm it is one speedy number. For example, my son has been using a Panasonic 4 X CD-R drive for about two years, on which it takes 15 minutes to burn our 513 MB test file using a Lombard 333 MHz PowerBook. With the Lombard connected to the Que! Fire drive through a KeySpan PC Card FireWire adapter, we were able to record that same file in three minutes 38 seconds. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, back to a few basics. Everyone is familiar with audio compact disks and CD-ROMs. CD-recordable (CD-R) technology allows anyone with a reasonably fast personal computer, a CD-R drive, and the appropriate CD mastering software, to record their own audio and data CDs. Recordable CDs are technically different from mass-produced ones, but once recorded they perform similarly, and compared with other types of recordable media, they are dirt cheap, which makes their inability to be re-recorded a relatively trivial drawback. However, even that shortcoming is addressed by the CD-rewritable (CD-RW), a newer technology that allows media to be erased and rewritten up to 1000 times. CD-RW drives can also write to CD-R media. (Unfortunately, some CD-ROM drives, such as the one in my WallStreet PowerBook, can't read CD-RWs, although it has no trouble with CD-Rs). Both CD-R and CD-RW allow you to store up to 450 times the amount of information you could fit on a high-density floppy disk (650-700 MB), on media that costs only two to four times as much as a floppy. This makes CD recordable media ideal for data backups, especially if you have a recorder with a fast interface like SCSI or FireWire. The Que! Fire 16x 10x 40x is the quintessence of such a device. Like other QPS products, the Que! Fire drive comes in a very nice, soft carry case with individual, Velcro-secured pockets for the device, the power supply brick, cables, software CD, and some media. The cables that come with the Que! FireWire devices are very substantial, and the whole kit has a quality look and feel about it. There is also a good, clear, illustrated print manual, which even includes a glossary of CD-related terminology. Setting up the Que! Fire drive is very simple -- the epitome of plug and play. Just plug in the power and FireWire cables and turn the drive on with its power switch. There are no software drivers to install, so all you need to do is install the Adaptec Toast CD mastering software that comes bundled with the drive on your Mac (QPS affirms that the drive is compatible with future versions of iTunes). Once the installer has done its stuff, restart the Mac, and you're in business. A word about system requirements. QPS says that the minimum supported system is a 233 MHz G3 machine, but I had no problems running the Que! Fire 16 x 10 x 40 x drive on my UMAX SuperMac S-900, which has only a 200 MHz 604e processor. The S-900 is running Mac OS 9.1, and has a MacAlly PCI to FireWire card. However, the maximum write speed I could manage with the S-900 was 10x. Attempts at 16x and 12x burns resulted in buffer underrun errors. At 10x, a backup of my collected works, 623.9 MB made up of 8972 files in 679 folders to a CD-RW disc took seven minutes, three seconds. As noted earlier, no such speed limitation problems were encountered running the drive at 16x with the Lombard. With QPS's "BURNProof" technology enabled, the Que! Fire eliminates buffer underrun errors in fast write modes, and allows for multi-tasking. You need Mac OS 8.6 or later, a minimum 64 MB of RAM, a CD-ROM drive, 50 MB free hard disk space for software installations, and an additional 700 MB free for CD image creation. In addition to the UMAX S-900, and the Lombard, we also tested the Que! Fire drive with my WallStreet 233 MHz PowerBook, which has a MacAlly FireWire PC Card adapter. The ease of set up and lack of configuration hassles with FireWire will bring a smile to the face or even a tear to the eye of anyone who is a veteran of battles with SCSI, and moving this machine from one Mac to another is just a matter of unplugging and replugging the cord. However, if SCSI suits your needs better, this drive is also available with an Ultra SCSI interface. The Que! Fire is also a platform ambidexterous, and includes bundled software for both Macs and PCs, so not only can use it with more than one Mac, but also with FireWire equipped Wintel boxes. Personally, I would prefer an external writable CD drive like this to a built in one, the up-front cost being comparable, which it is. For example, the Que! Fire16x 10x 40x drive sells for $439.95 (or $ 419.95 after the current $30 rebate) A 450 MHz G4 Cube with a DVD-ROM drive is currently $1,299, and the same machine with a CD-RW drive a and 64 MB more RAM is $1,599 -- a $300 difference, but by buying the cheaper Cube and the Que! Fire drive you still get a built-in DVD drive on the Cube, plus a much higher performance CD-RW drive (the Apple internal CD-RW unit is only rated at 8X) that you can use with more than one Mac. [Addendum: Reader Knox Rogers writes that "You can also get this drive at MacZone for $319.99 ($349.99 - less $30 rebate)." The Que! Fire drive is pleasantly styled, and as I mentioned, has a feel of quality about it. The case plastics are Graphite and Ice, which will match many Macs and complement others. Press the eject button and the CD tray slides out with a quiet smooth whirring sound. Drop in the CD, give the tray a nudge, and it retracts. The drive does make a noticeable buzzing sound when it is spooling up, but considering its speed, that is to be expected. It is admirably vibration free, and I was able to use it perched on top of my S-900's monitor without any worry about it shaking itself off. The Que! Fire is quite a large unit with substantial heft (nearly 3 lbs.), which probably partly accounts for its vibration-damping capability. Besides being a disc writer, the Que! Fire drive can serve as a CD-ROM drive with its maximum 40x read speed. I tried a variety of data disks in the drive, and they read fine. However, for some reason, I could not get it to play VCD movies through the PC Card FireWire adapter in my WallStreet's, although the same VCD played nicely in the PowerBook's own 20x expansion bay drive. Do you need a 16x CD-burner? Unless you have a business or professional reason to do a lot of CD-writing, probably not, and QPS makes other Que! Fire CD-RW drives of more modest 12x 10x 32x ($289.95), and 8x 8x 32x ($209.95) speeds in this same form factor. If you're mainly interested in burning rewritable disks, the 12x 10x 32x writes than at the same speed as the 16x 10x 40x unit, and is $130 cheaper at $289.95 after rebate. However, speed is never a hardship, and if you want to be at the current bleeding edge of CD-R/CD-RW performance (for the moment -- Yamaha has announced, but not yet released a 20x 10x 40x unit), the Que! Fire 16x 10x 40x is a nice piece of work, especially if you have a speedy enough Mac to let it stretch its legs. I could find no reason not to give this unit our top, five smiley rating.  The Que! Fire 16x 10x 40x sells for $439.95. QPS is also offering a $30 mail-in rebate through June 30, 2001. The rebate offer is good for U.S. and Canadian customers only. For more information, visit:
Special thanks to Dave Shultz of Applelust.com who arranged for me to get this product to test. Dave is posting a companion review on Applelust which includes performance benchmarking and a test of how the drive works using Apple's Disc Burner software as an alternative to the bundled Toast CD-mastering software. You'll find Dave's review here:
Appendix Features:
Specs:
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