Panasonic 32x or Actima 40x?

[Snafu]

I'm looking at buying a cd-rom, a Panasonic 32x or an Actima 40x, both the same price. Any thoughts on which is better?

[Jo]

The speed is fine runnning at 32X or faster.
Since they are the same price, You should put your eyes on the product service. Such warranty, and tech support.
good luck!

[Macs]

I haven't really benchmarked a 32X, 36 or 40X CROMs but based on actual usage I don't feel that theres a difference in speed. So when I bought mine - an ASUS 40X - my decision to buy was not actually based on the speed but rather on the ability of the drive to read CDs. Sure, there drives that cost much less and are advertised as 40X or so but have you tried running one of your older games, or an archive of your fav utilities - with a little scratch on the surface. I use mine from running games to installing software and even watch VCDs, I've also gone into duplication of old database CDs that normally cannot be read by my previous drives.

I'm not really familiar with the Actimax but I've tried the Panasonic and I'd say it's a good choice too, if you can't get the ASUS.

[rml]

Panasoic will be the choice!

I had put in a Panasonic 24X together with
HP CD Writer and a Actima 36X and HP CD Writer on 2 of my friends' system.

The one with Panasonic never complain anything and the other one had problem copying SOME audio CD or large CD (close to 600MB)

That's only my experience.