Cut and paste Mr. Peikert's experience into this space. I went through an almost identical experience. The drive functioned for me for about 1 month; I burned maybe four DVDs with it. Same problem with being able to contact tech support. Jump through stupid hoops even though you know the hardware is faulty. Jeez...... my blood is starting to boil all over just thinking about dealing with these idiots. I unfortunately I have not gotten to the point of getting an RMA. I am still waiting for another tech support response. Last thing: don't even think about misplacing your driver software. Unlike every other manufacturer in the world, Sony does not make its device drivers readily available for download. If you misplace your drivers, you have to BUY another CD-rom and wait for it to come in the mail..... ridiculous. I should have known better after having problems with the last Sony piece of hardware I bought (a PDA) and getting the same run around then. Never again Sony... you STINK!

As with another reviewer, my drive was working fine and I was very happy with it -- for a couple of months. Then one day, when burning a CD, it just conked out -- and stopped recognizing almost all media (save for a couple of store-bought audio CDs, which it played with too many skips and delays to be useful). The drive would try to spin up, but would just grind and skip and spin irregularly.

I don't normally mind an occassional lemon product, if the problem is corrected properly and without hassle -- but the treatment from customer so-called "support" I received was infuriating. First, Sony hides its phone number on its support website (I couldn't find it at all), making you use email or a "live chat" site that was unavailable. The responses I received from email support, which I waited over 2 days to receive, were so devoid of content as to be useless: "go back to the last known good configuration" and "we do not support your operating system." This was all despite the fact that I clearly told them that the drive was physically failing to spin up whenever I inserted a disc, and was only recognizing certain audio CDs.

When I did finally find a phone support number, it was equally unhelpful. Despite the fact that I had already done all the simple diagnostics and was describing obviously faulty hardware, they made me jump through all their stupid hoops before helping me with anything (as if I was trying to run some scam on them -- yes, I'd love to pay for shipping to trade in my perfectly good drive and wait a couple weeks for an exact duplicate!). Eventually I cajoled the tech into granting me an RMA. The emailed instructions on how to return the product were condescending and threatening -- "don't do this, this or this, or we will retract your RMA!"

In short, Sony may make fine hardware, but it must get its act together on the technical support front. I have serious doubts about whether I will ever buy another computer component from Sony again.

This recorder installed every easily and worked like a charm from the get-go. No problems with it at all.

Only drawback is with trying to remove the white covers and putting the black ones on. Not easy to do. Lousy instructions and I was worried I might break something, so I have a white-fronted recorder in my black computer, but no biggie.

Easy to install per enclosed instructions,except for the black faceplate. After reading the instructions to change it countless times, they finally made sense and the new one popped right on. Windows XP recognized the drive right away and I've had no problems accessing the drive.
The Nero softwear was another story. I wanted to make a slideshow DVD of over 300 wedding photos with music. I had no trouble creating it, but couldn't record a DVD-R. Finally figured out I had started the process in CD mode. This does not convert, so had to start arranging all 300 photos over again in DVD mode. Now I find it easy. Designed the DVD cover and everything, all by m'self. The problems I encountered were not with the softwear at all... they were with the user. It would have been better to start with a few trial projects than one all-day project, just to familiarize myself with the capabilities of the softwear.
I had tried other DVD burning softwear from Pinnacle Studio and had trouble with it hanging up my computer with so many photos to juggle. Very frustrating. Nero did not hang me up at all, and once I got the hang of it, it worked quickly and smoothly and I'm very pleased with the Wedding DVD.

I've had this DVD burner for a few weeks now, and have burned about 5 dvd's so far. No problems with the burning, just make sure you download the latest firmware from Sony to resolve any other problems.

I thought the tray was kind of flimsy. (Be very careful!)
Black bezel replacement goes great with my Dell case.

This DVD burner was shipped fast and packaged really good. So far I love it.

I got this during Amazon's thanksgiving sale for under $40. The drive works great and installation was a snap. The software that comes with it is also excellent (Nero). I tried burning different types of discs as soon as I installed the drive; CD-R, CD-RW, movie DVD of some home video, mp3 songs on dvd disc etc. All formats burn very good and quick. It even took some cheap discs w/o any problem.

The only complaint I have is the plastic. I wanted to change the front bezel since my computer is black in color. The white bezel currently in the drive is bad plastic and it stuck so tightly to the drive tray that I feared breaking the drive tray trying to remove it. I have it with the ugly white bezel now.

As usual amazon's shipping and pricing was great!

Just bought this a couple of weeks ago and have already burned numerous home movies and backups. The drive itself was easy to install, as was the software. The only reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5 is because the bundled video capturing/editing is not very good, compared to some of the Pioneer models, which comes with Ulead software. I never figured out why my very first disc would only play on my desktop, but not standalone DVD players. But thankfully I already own Studio 8 and used it instead to produce reliable home DVD's one after another. In general though, Nero is very good for copying and making CD's or DVD's; it makes the entire process almost idiot-proof. If you don't plan on doing any video edits (or already own better software), then this is the one to get. Great price too.

Not sure what happened. I was watching a dvd, paused it, and when I resumed play it hung the PC. On reboot, the DRU-800a would not recognize any media.

I bought this product to create DVD movies from my SONY Camcorder and I love it. It is an excellent product, easy to install and comes bundled with Nero.

FK

Frankly when I decided to finally breakdown and get a DVD burner, I looked a long time before deciding on this drive. I wanted a product that I wasn't going to have to fight with to get it in my PC and worked as advertised. Unfortunately you never know how something is going to work until you've plunked down your hard-earned coin, gone through all the hassle of taking your case apart, fitting everything back in, putting it together, and only after firing it up do you actually know that maybe it's gonna work - or maybe it won't. Who need's that hassle?

When deciding on anything for purchase I really only have two criteria: the reputation of the manufacturer and the opinion of other customers. I freely admit to being a Sony partisan - every appliance I've ever bought from them has been a winner and when I finally do buy something with the Sony logo and it doesn't work flawlessly out of the box, I will weep like a jilted lover. But sooner or later, it's gonna happen - you know it and I know it.

So that takes me to the customer ratings: the opinions of fellow consumers who've been there and done that. While the customer satisfaction rating is high, it'd only been rated by 2 or 3 people when I decided to take the plunge. And I'm leery of evaluations by someone who's never evaluated anything before. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I generally take look to see if the reviewer has a track record and consider that angle as well. So, after all that, I hit on this drive and decided to take a chance. It was a good call.

The computer I was working with was only about a year and half old (or middle aged in terms of techno-life span) and I think that's going to impact whether or not you have success with any upgrade. Also, I'm not your average bear when it comes to PC's - I've been in this game since CPM was an actual O/S and a huge hard drive was 10MB and reserved for the military: no one else could afford one. That said, this drive was a dream to install and configure. When installing the drive, check with your PC's manufacturer or documentation, but if your PC has been thrown together in the last two years, use the "cable select" option; for older systems, I'd recommend replacing an existing drive and making this the master drive.

Microsoft (love 'em or hate 'em) is the biggest software company in the world for a reason - most of the time their stuff works as advertised. In this case, XP immediately recognized and installed the drive with no more interaction from me than just turning the system on.

Having gotten this far (and before doing anything else) go to Sony's website and download the firmware update for this drive. One point: before running the update you're advised to turn off DMA transfer mode, which is done in Windows device manager. It's beyond the scope of this review to give you detailed technical instructions, but using any web search engine will easily walk you through the procedure. Having done that, reboot your computer. When it comes back up, you're ready to install the Nero DVD authoring software that comes bundled with the drive. It sounds like a lot of work, but in reality it only took me about an hour to accomplish all that and start making my own DVD. And it worked flawlessly in my home theater. The sound was the biggest surprise - who knew home movies could sound so good?

So I highly recommend this drive. It works great and the Nero software is a breeze to use. But, as Dennis Miller used to say, "that's just my opinion. I could be wrong."

Just bought this and have burned many discs. It works great. The Nero software that comes with it is great, too.

Make sure this is installed as a Master drive. I have 2 DVD burners on my computer and I could not get it to work as a Slave drive.

It's a great product and ive been using it during the last 3 mounths and i didn't have any problem until now. Very fast, good trademark and with a good program