MCE Technologies LLC has announced an upgrade for PowerBook G4s that replaces stock Apple optical drives with a slot-loading 8x DVD-Recordable mechanism instead. The new drives provides both DVD+R DL, or Double Layer, and DVD-R DL, or Dual Layer support. The new drive ships for US$199.
The new drive records 4.7GB DVD-R/RW and 4.7GB DVD+R/RW media at up to 8x speed. and can record DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media at up to 4x speed. The drive can also write 650MB and 700MB CD-R media at up to 24x speed, CD-RW media at up to 24x speed and reads CD-ROMs at up to 24x speed.
What’s more, MCE claims that the replacement drive is up to 20 percent lighter than current PowerBook optical drives. And it’s bootable, supported by iTunes, iDVD, Finder Burning, iPhoto and DVD Player. MCE uses a driver to support Mac OS 9 and higher (including Mac OS X v10.4).
The MCE 8x SuperDrive upgrade is compatible with all 12-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch PowerBook G4 models. The $199 price is applicable to PowerBooks that have a CD-RW/DVD-ROM “Combo” drive or SuperDrive already installed. DVD-ROM or CD-ROM-equipped PowerBooks are also support, although the upgrade costs $249 for those models.