The Best Free CD/DVD Tool – CDBurnerXP

A few weeks ago I helped a friend decide on, and purchase, a new computer – an AM2/X2 Dual Core 2.5 GHz box with 4 Gig of Memory, a 160 GIG 7200RPM SATA and of course a DVD Drive – all this for $299.00.

At this price, the operating system was not included; but still, not a bad deal! The O/S from his old machine would be installed on this new machine; so no problem.

Where he did have a problem though, was he lacked a CD/DVD burning suite. Into this gap stepped CDBurnerXP, a free burner application which will write CDs and DVDs and, for those on the leading edge, Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs.

If your looking for value (and what can be better than free), CDBurnerXP is definitely a significant freeware application. The fairly simple interface makes it a breeze for even the most inexperienced user, although it should be said that some users have mentioned that the interface has some confusing aspects.

A disadvantage for some potential users may be the necessity to download and install .Net Framework 2.0, which is a 22.4 MB Microsoft application (280 MB on install), that will take at least an hour to download over a dial-up Internet connection.

Since my friend is in the music business (he’s a well known local musician), and sells his CDs at his gigs, this application got a real workout during the first few weeks after I installed it on his system. The several hundred CDs he copied and burned (of his own music), were all flawlessly reproduced by CDBurnerXP.

If you’re looking for a free burner application to do what it says it will do with an easy to work with interface then CDBurnerXP could be the program you’ve been looking for.

Quick facts:

Burn audio-CDs with, and without gaps between tracks

Burn on the fly (you don’t have to image the disc in advance)

Rip Audio-CDs to a Hard Drive

Obtains track-information (ID3-tags) from the Internet

Burn and create ISO-files

Create bootable discs

Drag-and-drop

Multilanguage interface

Customizable with many settings

Data verification after burn,

Simple cover printing

Supports most IDE, USB, FireWire and SCSI drives

Free – (for both personal and corporate use)

No adware, malicious components, or restrictions

System Requirements: 2000/XP/Vista

Additional Requirements: .NET Framework 2.0

Download at: Download.com