Not really a review: 30 minutes with LG's GSA-E50L Slim External DVD Player
I bought LG's GSA-E50l external DVD drive. It was inoperable out of the box: a circumstance so baffling I briefly wondered if it required drivers or some such, heralding a new era of basic in-out hardware that doesn't work until after an OS is loaded. Ah, but no! It's just a lemon.
I tried it on four computers, including a desktop, a laptop, a Zonbox and an iMac. Not one machine could see it. The power light came on, but the disk tray wouldn't eject and it is not detected as a USB device.
Staring at the little 5"-square slab on the desk, I realized that I was in a pickle. I wanted a slimline bus-powered optical drive, and this was the only one that the local brick 'n' mortars carried. Suspicion was strong from the beginning: whereas most such things are plain, sleek rectangles, LG's GSA-E50L is overdesigned, resembling a giant squashed suppository. It is what Charlie Sorrel at Gadget Lab would describe as "plastic tat."
Alas, it is therefore unrated and unreviewed, but can hardly be recommended. I shall endeavor to find out if this is a common problem with bus-powered optical drives: most such models require external power, even with dual-USB Y cords.
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Just got one, it works on the Thinkpad X61 running Vista, but it won't run on the Thinkpad X30 running XP.
I just bought one, mostly for loading programs on an Asus EEEPc. Worked great, didn't even need the extra USB cable for power (it was boxed with one USB to mini usb, and one USB to DC power pin).
I also had the problem that the drive did not work on two of my computers ("unknown device"). In both cases switching and using another USB port on my computer fixed it. Must be a bug with the firmware.