Yes, this is a rant! Bear with me. I can't be the only one seeing these stupid problems over and over. I confess, I'm a movie junkie. I've burned HUNDREDS of CD's, starting years ago when a CD burner was an expensive option few hard. PLEASE someone tell me they see these stupid things repeated off and on as well.

Presently I have THREE burners on my 3 PC's, all considered reilable in many reviews.

1. HP 8200i, 2. Richo MP9120A 3. Yamaha YST-MS50

I use only PREMIUM brand media from an assortment of well known producers and never write more than 95% of the capicity to the disc. I am exceedingly careful not to get any fingerprints, smuges or mishandle the CD's in any way. Each is stored in a plastic jewel case, never exposed to sunlight, etc., etc., etc.. In short I'm VERY careful.

So why are some CD's so fragile, unreliable and prone to fail or is it crappy hardware or both?

Case in point, yesterday I burned 3 CD's on the Yamaha using Nero 5.5. The burns were flawless. Other times I use Easy CD Creator 5. After burning I always play the CD from start to finish to ensure it is a good burn. So why in the %$%(#% today does my Yamaha refuse to read anything from 2 of the CD's? Ditto for the Ricoh. So I try them on the HP and both play fine. Why?

Damn it, I can reverse this and say some CD's I've burned in the past play fine in the Yamaha and/or Ricoh and won't be read at all in the HP. Why is that?

I have had situations where a favorite CD that apparently stopped playing months ago after dozens of tries on each CD drive, including cold reboots to ensure it wasn't some stupid Windows hang, suddenly plays fine again. Why? Why? Why?

Oh by the way, I got replacements on both the HP and Ricoh drives because the originals after slight use (under 50 burns each) started having frequent burn problems. The replacements seem to burn fine, not having made any coasters for months, yet still these stupid read problems won't go away, they are totally random that make no damn sense at least to me. So-called "quality" control seems a joke.

Am I alone, or just maybe CD technology is crap and us consumers have been conned.

Think not? Well maybe this will change your opinion. About 16 months ago, talking to a senior HP tech trying to get a RMA to return the drive he flat out told me that CD's should NEVER be used for mission critical storage, that in fact HP has an in house policy that demands all data stored on CD's be backed up on some non CD storage such as a hard drive or tape. Strong words from a company that sells CD burners. If they don't think the technology is reliable, then how can consumers?

What is going on here or am I a little paranoid?