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Roxio Easy Media Creator 7 vs. Nero Burning ROM 6


in terms of CD-burning, ISO-burning, DVD-burning, all sorts of burning, yaddayaddanyaaa


Which would you recommend?

Roxio has a ... bad history of bloat and non-functionality, as well as not always recognizing the newest CD/DVD burners -- it sometimes requires patches to update its burner database. Nero doesn't require anything of the sort; I have Nero 5 and it works rather nicely.

Although I use X-CD-Roast on a regular basis, so I haven't used Nero in a while

Considering Roxio's software fights with itself (re: you have to disable Direct CD before you use Easy CD Creator, and you have no choice but to install both....and Direct CD sticks itself in your startup.) I say go with Nero. I've been using Nero since version 4 and haven't had the first problem with it. Unlike anything by Roxio, Nero has a clean interface, isn't a fucking memory hog, and does what the hell its supposed to without any of the bloat. Furthermore, when making ISOs, EZCD does NOT follow the ISO standard and uses a proprietary format while using the ISO extention. (only EZCD will be able to actually read the ISO file)

If I were you, I'd download the Nero6 demo and order a CD code directly from Ahead. Its alot cheaper that way, and you get the exact same thing you'd get on CD. Granted, its split up into three different installers (Nero itself, Nero Express (the n00b version of Nero minus some functionality of the full blown version), and NeroMix (demo ver).

Nero 6 is to bloated for me but I was forced to upgrade from Nero 5 to get support for my DVD burner... Sigh

I downloaded Nero 6 and rocured a CD code (a legal one, really.. from an old Nero CD I had lying around) to unlock the full extra-special something-or-other edition. I love it.

Roxio, on the other hand, usually ends up pissing me off, for various reasons. Of course, most of those are usually my fault...

I remember when Easy CD Creator was good. That was back when it was called ADAPTEC Easy CD Creator. Ever since they changed the name to Roxio and spun it into a separate division, it went right to shit. I remember one particular version of Roxio which would actually nuke a win2k installation and make it unbootable. Just a little bug they missed in beta testing

Nowadays, I don't even want to look at a trial version of Roxio. Their products suck, and they suck.

I have to use Roxio strange as it might sound, to make DVDs, Nero just
refuses to work with my TDK DVD-R

I used to use Adaptec Easy CD Creator with my first CD-RW drive (a 4/2/12 affair). Pretty bloat-free and easy to use. Then came my second CD-RW, which came with Roxio. That just sucked, despite being an "upgrade" to the Adaptec version I had -- bloated, buggy, and it would crash while writing a disc one out of ten times. I still have a large stack of coasters from before I realized the software was shitty rather than the burner itself.

I switched to Nero at that point, and haven't looked back since. I'm still at 5.5, as 6.0 has picked up cruft and my 5.5 license doesn't apply to 6.0 (though I qualify for a rebate, it's still $50 to go to 6.0). Also, I hear that Nero 6 has issues with the Windows XP SP2 RC, so if you choose Nero, you might want to grab the latest version out and then watch for updates to dodge that bullet before SP2 final comes out.

As for the UDF packet writing software, I've lost literal gigabytes of data to both Roxio DirectCD and Nero InCD. Best to just disable both if you have them and just use conventional session-based burning if you need to make multiple writes.

I've used Nero 5 and 6, I've been using them since I had my first burner, I have NEVER had made coaster.

Nero has always produced viable CDs, whereas Easy CD would ruin them 25% of the time.

Alcohol 120%, my CD/DVD burning application of choice for Windows computers. Never tried Nero personally, but I can't stand Roxio's products.

Vohu Manah wrote:Alcohol 120%, my CD/DVD burning application of choice for Windows computers. Never tried Nero personally, but I can't stand Roxio's products.

Alcohol 120% is definitely a superior piece of software to Nero for making and writing ISOs, but it's rather weak if you want to just throw together some files and burn them immediately. Alcohol also has a virtual CD-ROM drive utility, which is useful if you want to mount an ISO for greater speed than reading a CD (especially for games which read from the CD a lot). Still, it's more of a compliment for Nero or Roxio rather than a replacement.

Crayz9000 wrote:Roxio has a ... bad history of bloat and non-functionality, as well as not always recognizing the newest CD/DVD burners -- it sometimes requires patches to update its burner database. Nero doesn't require anything of the sort; I have Nero 5 and it works rather nicely.

Although I use X-CD-Roast on a regular basis, so I haven't used Nero in a while

Nero has an ISO mounter too I believe. Then again, Linux has that capability built in.

Although I use X-CD-Roast on a regular basis, so I haven't used Nero in a while.

I use mkisofs+cdrecord . I hate any user interface that's not GTK2 so much that I would rather use the command line (ERoaster sucks too).

Nero.

Anything I have had to do with Roxio vs Nero would echo what has already been said in the posts above.

Datana wrote:

Vohu Manah wrote:Alcohol 120%, my CD/DVD burning application of choice for Windows computers. Never tried Nero personally, but I can't stand Roxio's products.

Alcohol 120% is definitely a superior piece of software to Nero for making and writing ISOs, but it's rather weak if you want to just throw together some files and burn them immediately. Alcohol also has a virtual CD-ROM drive utility, which is useful if you want to mount an ISO for greater speed than reading a CD (especially for games which read from the CD a lot). Still, it's more of a compliment for Nero or Roxio rather than a replacement.

It only has the capability to mount a SINGLE ISO. You're much better off using daemon tools which allows you to use four. It even emulates copy protection so your copy protected games will run just fine.

Shep: You try the latest version of Nero 6? My DVD burner (Lite-On LDW-411S) would work fine in Nero 5, but wouldn't work in earlier versions of 6.

Darth Wong wrote:I remember when Easy CD Creator was good. That was back when it was called ADAPTEC Easy CD Creator. Ever since they changed the name to Roxio and spun it into a separate division, it went right to shit. I remember one particular version of Roxio which would actually nuke a win2k installation and make it unbootable. Just a little bug they missed in beta testing

Nowadays, I don't even want to look at a trial version of Roxio. Their products suck, and they suck.

Even back then it was extremely limited. It was unable to copy a non-windows CD (Mac or playstation, for example).

Vertigo1 wrote:It only has the capability to mount a SINGLE ISO. You're much better off using daemon tools which allows you to use four. It even emulates copy protection so your copy protected games will run just fine.

What are you talking about? Alcohol 120% does copy protection as well, and emulates up to six drives. Perhaps you didn't notice the "Number of Virtual Drives" setting under Options -> Virtual Drive? Don't make up deficiencies where they don't exist.

I prefer nero as a bundled soft, but I don't use either, as I seldom burn anything onto disks, and when I do I use the inbuilt roxio xp shufty, if that counts

However, installing Alchohol 120% and daemon tools in quick succession (to make dvd isos work, clone cd dies in the ass if you try and mass copy off a dvd (like durin an install)) I killed one of my xp boxes with super-slow boot on the desktop phase. Daemon tools is fine as far as it goes, but I prefer the clone cd integration.

Vohu Manah wrote:Alcohol 120%, my CD/DVD burning application of choice for Windows computers.

Same here. Far superior

Daemon Tools caused blue screens on Windows startup for me~ No idea why~

I used to mainly use NTI CD Maker, since it's what came with my burner and it did pretty much everything I needed it to do. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it couldn't create or burn ISOs, instead it was stuck on using its own format for everything. Didn't really make much of a difference for the stuff I normally used it for (making a copy of a CD or backing up a bunch of files on to a CD) but it did force me to use FireBurner to make my various Linux install CDs.

These days, though, I just use the CD-burning software built in to Gnome. Am I ever glad that they finally started supporting IDE CD-burners in Linux in kernel 2.6. I was never able to get the SCSI emulation to work.

Hamel wrote:Daemon Tools caused blue screens on Windows startup for me~ No idea why~

Daemon Tools' driver is not the best written, I've had some problems with it as well.

Pu-239 wrote:

Crayz9000 wrote:Although I use X-CD-Roast on a regular basis, so I haven't used Nero in a while.

I use mkisofs+cdrecord . I hate any user interface that's not GTK2 so much that I would rather use the command line (ERoaster sucks too).

Mandrake Cooker has a GTK+ 2 build of xcdroast. I'm happy.

Hamel wrote:Daemon Tools caused blue screens on Windows startup for me~ No idea why~

Which version of Windows? I've run Daemon flawlessly on Win2K for quite some time now.

Nero 5 on Win2k and a TDK burner from Walmart, which means the damn thing's been Nerfed all to hell. It still works good....