14 DAY TRIAL // OpenSource applications have been an intriguing subject for a long time. Who makes them, how do they make them and most of all, why they are made are the main themes of this never-ending discussion. As for every delicate situation, people are divided into three large categories: those who are pro, those who are against and those who don't care as long as it doesn't cost them money.
The first category sustain their agreement saying that either a developer is free to choose whether to sell his product or not, or that he is really fond of making softwares, or he just wants to make a name for himself hoping that a large company would hire him for his skills. The cons category say that they made a purpose in trying to bring down its shareware opponents, or even that freeware producers are just showing off because they post all those donating ads on their sites revealing their true purpose, that of eventually earning money. With all this "war", the third class gets all the benefits. They download the applications, use them and all this free of charge and remorse. In my opinion, this is by far the best approach taking into account this subject because we have no right to judge a person or group of persons when it comes to free will.
Another problem that reveals itself in all this freeware/shareware quarrel is the quality difference. Are chargeable softwares better than the opposite or not? Taking into account that there are many priced applications of which the only good feature is to crash, my opinion is not. There are a lot of smart guys out there who are doing a great job when it comes to free of charge quality programs. And I sustain my idea thinking of Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, Avast, Yahoo Messenger, 7-ZIP, Virtual Box and many more. No doubt that softwares like Microsoft Office suite have more features and better looks but who needs them when you only want to write a plain text?
If all you want is to burn a CD/DVD, you could try DP CD DVD burner. The first time you open it, the application has extremely simple looks. You can only change the font color and choose whether to use the skin or not. When I saw this option, I asked myself that if this is the skin, it must be really funny without any. But after visiting the developer's site, I realized what this is all about. It has an extra pack of downloadable skins that give the application new looks.
Next to skins, a series of plugins enlarge the possibilities of the program. The AudioBurning plug-in assures decoding on-the-fly of not only MP3, WMA, WMV, ASF and WAV but also of OGG Vorbis compressed audio files. With the VideoBurning plug-in, you can now burn VCD, SVCD and DVD-Video. The DVDVideo to ISO option makes possible creating an ISO image file from a DVD-Video folder. I tried to see if the application is able to make an .iso fole from a DVD disk but I had a great disappointment. The plug-ins are downloaded as 7-ZIP archives so the developer has two solutions if unpacking may become an issue. You can either choose its Simplyzip unpacker or link to 7-ZIP official site.
Even if these options cannot be changed, the developer assures us that its application prevents bad burns and CD creation errors by using advanced technologies such as Burn-Proof, Just Link and OPC. The program has two Settings locations. One of them is in the main window and you can choose from ejecting disk after burn, Joliet file system (the filename can be longer - up to 64 Unicode characters), finalizing the disk (disable/enable multisession), verify after burn, testburn (makes a virtual burning of the session) and it imports last session.
The second location is by clicking on the Configure tab. Here you can enable Fifo (First In First Out) autodetect, to use skin option or choose FontColor. The close INCD option is all about drag-and-dropping. It allows optical disks to be used in a similar manner to a floppy disk. The External ASPI (Advanced SCSI Programming Interface) allows writing on an external optical device. You can also choose which application should be used to Scan For Virus After Burn. The Info tab opens a window with the chosen drive information concerning name, read/write features, etc.
The application seems to limp from time to time but for an early version, it is extremely satisfying. The windows cannot be resized, it has difficulties in recognizing the devices but once started, it does a really great job.
The Good
It is a great project and it's much better than other shareware softwares. With the help of the plug-ins, the application becomes very capable and the skins look quite good.
The Bad
As any early version, it needs some improvements, such as faster detecting an external CD/DVD device and the DVDVideo to ISO plug-in should be fixed in order to be able to read the VIDEO_TS folders from a DVD.
The Truth
It is simple, it is reliable, it can be improved, it does a great job and all these for free.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
