While the drive works with USB 1.1, the speeds drop substantially (down to 4X/4X/6X) thanks to the bottleneck this slower connection enforces. While USB 2.0 isn't actually the 40 times faster that has been promised, it's still a substantial jump in speed, making products like this Predator a viable external option.

The sharp-looking blue and gray drive is a cinch to install--load the software, plug the drive into a USB port and an AC adapter (it won't run off of USB power alone), and you're ready to go. As with many portable CD players, you can watch discs spin inside the Predator through the translucent window. The drive features a headphone jack and volume control for use as an audio CD player.

While you can find internal CD-RW drives (and some FireWire external drives) that burn CD-Rs and write to CD-RWs faster than this Predator, they're not that much faster. We were able to burn to CD-R at the promised 24X speed and write to CD-RW at just under 10X. And we were also able to find the drive for around $160--a steal for an external CD-RW drive.

While the Predator is also smaller than some external drives, it's still decent-sized (roughly 6x8 inches and 2 inches thick), and with the required AC adapter, it's not the most portable of drives for notebook users.

A suitable software bundle includes Iomega's own HotBurn CD-creation application for burning and packet-writing to discs, as well as MusicMatch Jukebox (for ripping and playing audio) and Adobe ActiveShare, an over-the-Internet photo-sharing application.

If you've already made it up to USB 2.0, the Iomega Predator external CD-RW drive is a great way to test your new faster interface. The high speeds of USB 2.0 keep the throughput bottlenecks to a minimum on this sleek, inexpensive, and speedy peripheral.

Pro: Fast speeds, inexpensive.

Con: Requires USB 2.0 for best speed.