Mark Twain wrote:
I noticed the other Verbatim link was from Canada so I
found this:

http://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-Rewri...18484&sr =1-1

One of the products is 4X, the other is 12X.

I have the Verbatim 12X as my CD-RW media. About
half a cake box left.

The 4X is going to write a bit slower. So you'll need
to be more patient waiting for the burn to complete.

Keep looking around, as if you see some product number
of Verbatim is still around, it should be available
in both Canada and US. Someone is bound to have a
cake box of moderately fast media for you.

Note that in some cases, even when a drive nominally
accepts media, the speed rating can be so radically
different, the drive refuses to burn (as it doesn't
have a write policy for the laser, for such a
difference). The burn can only work, if either
the subsystem can read and parse the label on
the media, or in some cases, the drive has a
calibration procedure where it can figure out
how much laser to use. The laser is infinitely
programmable, in terms of strength, with different
energy settings for read/write/erase. And for some
older drives, the laser is just too weak.

Your drive is not too old, so this is not the
problem. Your drive should handle just about
anything, and is modern enough.

And the writing rates are only consistent between families.
The DVD X-numbers are consistent between DVD types.
The CD X-numbers are consistent between CD types.
I have 52X CD-R, as the write-once kind are a lot
faster, but you cannot erase them. The CD-RW happen to be
12X, but that isn't exceptional. None of my media
is all that fast. The DVD DL I have left is only
2X, and it's as slow as molasses. You'd hate those.
But a DVD X unit of measure is worth more
megabytes per second than a CD X unit of measure
is worth. So you can't say my CD-RW at 12X is six times
faster than the DVD DL 2X disc I have left.

According to Wikipedia

150 KiB/s (1X) CD units of speed (12X = 1.8MB/sec)
10.5 Mbit/s (1×) DVD units of speed ( 2X = 2.625MB/sec)

so the DVD DL happens to be a bit faster than the CD-RW
I've got, but because the DVD DL holds 9GB of data and
the CD is 700MB, the write process is doing 13X as much
work. So it takes 13X as long to transfer a full length
Hollywood movie (not highly compressed). Most people
take 9GB movies and re-compress to 4.7GB and use
single-layer DVDs for such things. As it's more
practical. I only bought the dual layer media
as a learning experience (which it was).

And the media tends to read faster, than the write operation.
So the megabytes/sec goes up a bit when actually using
the finished disc. They tell you the write speed on the
outside of the tin, so you know how sluggish your
write session is going to be. Whether you have time
to make and drink a coffee, or the burn will be so slow,
it's time to go make dinner.

Paul