so i bought one of the new aluminum macbooks the other day... was extremely happy until i noticed that my screen was flickering when on the lowest brightness... a few other people have been having this issue as well by searching google... so i tried the refresh rate hack to no avail... so i decided i must return the darn thing but instead i wanted to keep the old one for comparison just incase it was going to be hard to compare which was more flickery if that was infact that case...

anyways... took a new one home and sat it next to the one i already had...

first thing i noticed was that the drive the cd/dvd rom drive that powers up sounded completely different...
and with further investigation... i noticed that:

macbook 1: matshita (panasonic)
macbook 2: optiarc (sony-nec)

so... did some investigating into which one was better....


turns out the matshitas have been given a bad rep... and they suck lol... i guess the issue is that they are very picky with meadia (not sure for reading or for writing..didnt dive that far)

so most people prefer the optiarc... which has no issues and was told by one informant that the optiarcs are better writers...


so just a heads up... some aluminum macs are shipping with matshitas and some are shipped with optiarcs...

I thought that was strange considering it was this early in there production... i would have figured that apple would have switched production mid year or something... but i guess they ship with diff drives depending on where they were built or which parts were available...


anyways...good luck... u can check which drive u have by going into disk utilities... or on windows by going into device manager

if yours says HL-DT-ST DVDRW GS21N like mine does, it's an LG drive

woo hoo!

I'm not sure which drive is "better". The part that I find that fails is the ribbon cable that feeds the laser (in any optical drive). You can usually see the point of failure by what appears to be black specks on the cable. I would *think* the "best" drive is the one that there are the most of "out there" to possibly rob parts from?

u got an LG? niiiiiiiiice... i wish mine was n LG... is urs a pro or is it a macbook...?

2.4 or 2.0?

Hello, just seen the post concerning the new macbook super drive. I bought the newest macbook pro at Best Buy and now stuck with the MATSHITA DVD-R Super Drive. It really stinks!!!! Anyway I am going to sell this one as it bothers me to know that Apple released the HL drive in other Macbooks. I dont understand that, and also I wonder if there is way to know whether a macbook has the HL drive or the MATSHITA DVD-R without booting up?? Let me know what you think, Thanks Tim

Same!!!
MacBook 2,4

SticMAC

The Apple crap!!!! I have ordered another Macbook Pro and I sure hope it has the better super drive not the MATSHITA. Anybody else figured out how and why there are two different drives made in the new macbook line. This drives me crazy!

i have the matshita, whats wrong with it?

It might be different, but the Panasonic (That's what Matshita's name is now) works fine for all my burning. Which is a lot.

i have the matshita as well but it seems just fine!done some burning and its perfect!!even DVD-DL!!!