MCE Technologies LLC on Tuesday announced their 8X Double Layer SuperDrive Upgrade Service for Apple’s Mac mini. For US$149, MCE will replace your Mac mini’s internal optical drive with a unit capable of recording up to 8.5GB of data on a single side of a DVD+R Double Layer disc.
The service starts at US$149 — that cost includes an upgrade at MCE’s facility and 2-day return delivery service. For $50 more, MCE will send you a protective shipping box via next day courier that includes pre-paid overnight delivery back to MCE. MCE then upgrades the system and returns it via next day service. Turnaround at MCE’s facility is one to two days, according to the company. MCE can also do hard drive or memory upgrades if needed.
The optical drive mechanism MCE installs is bootable and fully compatible with iTunes, iDVD, Finder burning, iPhoto and DVD Player, according to the company. It’s natively supported by Mac OS X v10.3.6 or later and Tiger. The drive burns DVD-R and DVD+R media at up to 8x, DVD-RW and DVD+RW at up to 4x, and DVD+R Double Layer discs at up to 2.4x. CD-R and CD-RW media can be written at up to 24x.
For do-it-yourselfers, MCE also makes available the drive on its own, but it costs $199.