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.

[#1 posted by fotherington , April 27, 2008 12:04 PM]

Just got one, it works on the Thinkpad X61 running Vista, but it won't run on the Thinkpad X30 running XP.