New to burning: Am I stupid?

[Eat Right]

If you don't mind, in this thread I'd like to take a little of the sting out of the word "stupid" if I can. I'm smart in some categories of life, and stupid in other areas. Aren't we all? To the point: even though my username is Eat Right, in this thread, go right ahead and call me stupid in order to make your point and to have a little fun, too. My question is coming right up, but first, the necessary info:

I have two DVD burners. One writer is built into my Dell XPS 400 desk top. The write speed is 16X. The other writer is one that I purchased at Fry's Electronics. It's made by Memorex. It also has a write speed of 16X. I posted the link to it down below. Unfortunately, this particular Memorex does not have any user reviews at Amazon or anywhere else for that matter, so I can't tell if it's a Rolls Royce or if it's a junk yard special. My question: would I be stupid to use my desktop writer as opposed to the Memorex writer? Or would there be no difference in the quality of the burn? To help smart people out there answer that question I'll provide the following details:

>last night I got schooled on DVD's. It appears that I'd be stupid to use a DVD other than the ones sold by TAIYO YUDEN and Verbatim, that's for sure. And maybe Sony, too. So I'll stick with those, for now

>this subject came to a head when I decided to get serious about finding the best way to back up my data. That's the main reason why I 'm learning the basics about burning. I have much to learn and thus I'm still a little stupid on the subject of burning, writers, DVD's, and all that goes with it

>i'm into photography big time. I'm not a pro, but I am a street photographer who lives to shoot, so I'll be backing up a lot of images to DVD's on a weekly basis

>i've never burned a movie or a software program to a DVD, because I've never done the P2P (peer to peer sharing) thing. but please keep in mind that that is something that's just right around the corner from me, maybe only a week or two away. In short time I'll be immersing myself into the world of Bittorrent (I have a few good Bittorrent tutorials bookmarked) so I expect to be an occasional P2P'er real soon

This site appears to be quite popular, I was lucky to find it while searching for information on DVD's. Thanks to all for any advice they have to offer.

my writer: http://reviews.cnet.com/dvd-drives/memorex-18x-multi-format/1995-3212_7-32339744.html

[redwudz]

Those Memorex external drives are made by several different manufacturers, some good, some not so good. You can use ImgBurn to check what drive the enclosure uses. It's freeware and highly recommended by most of us. In ImgBurn, look to 'Tools>Drive>Capabilities'. I burn 16X media at 12X, just to be one the safe side. It only takes a little more time. You can find Taiyo Yuden media online. Some suggested sources are Rima, SuperMediaStore or Meritline. Verbatim media can be mail ordered or found locally, often on sale.

Most times an internal drive is the best choice for burning, but either should work fine. If you are just burning data discs, ImgBurn is probably all you will need.

If you are planning to create video DVDs, then you might look to our guides for encoding, editing and authoring. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

And welcome to our forums.