I remember when my hard disk only held 20 MB of information. A box of diskettes could easily back up the whole drive. A few years later I paid over $2000 for a CD burner. Now even a good DVD burner is under $50. Yet the 4.7 GB capacity of a DVD seems limiting these days.

The next step up the capacity ladder is a Blu-Ray disc while can hold 22.5 GB of data, nearly five times as much as a DVD-ROM. Even better is that a very good drive costs less than $200. Unfortunately the cost of blank discs is still a little high, though we all know that will change as more time passes.

With this much data, speed is very important. The LG GBW-H20L drive is the fastest on the market with its claimed 6X speed. That translates to burning a completely full disc is just over 22 minutes. Of course it can also read and write DVDs and CDs. So while it costs a bit more to get a Blu-Ray burner, it may be worth it if you will need to work with all types of media. Don’t tell your boss (or your spouse), but it could also be used to watch Blu-Ray movies when you are taking a break between projects.