computerwoche.de

Archiv

GBurner Offers Little Beyond Free Burners

07.09.2009
It seems that every time I look around, another capable but unspectacular optical burning and imaging program such as ($30, 30-day free trial) pops up. Most often, as in this case, I'll find out about it when someone complains that yet another proprietary image format (single-file replicas of a CD or DVD) has appeared online. Usually, the excuse for the new format is that it's compressed--which generally leads to about a 5% savings in space at the expense of the interoperability that good ole' ISO brings to the table. If one were paranoid, one might suspect that these proprietary formats were being created just to sell the author's program.

Aside from suspicious marketing, gBurner is a decently capable and easy program to use. The interface is nicely rendered and logically laid out, and I especially liked the way the tasks panel hides not-in-use functions.

GBurner creates data CDs and DVDs, audio and mixed mode CDs, VCD and SVCDs, rips audio CDs, and handles images in ISO, bin/cue, daa, md, and its own gbi format. It also has the standard tools for erasing and gathering information on discs and burners. All worked just fine in my testing. Conspicuously missing is support for Blu-ray discs of any type or DVD movies.

There's nothing wrong with gBurner other than it being yet another $30 mid-range burning program with the aforementioned proprietary image format. To be fair, the same may be said for , , and several others. My advice is to stick with free alternatives such as , , or and search a bit longer for the ISO version of that disk image you want.