Dell USB Slim DVD +/- RW Drive DW316 - Plug and Play, 8 Watt Power Consumption, Windows 11 or below - Black

Recently I had a need for a DVD player for my laptop to play a few specific discs however with technology change, of course it did not have a built in optical drive. So I hit up amazon and picked out an external DVD/BD that claimed to be plug and play. But upon using it, there was no software to read discs and it would not work with the VLC software I already was familiar with and had installed. I returned it and went looking again.I came across this external player that specifically advertised it came with software to read discs as well as to burn them. It was a bonus this Dell external would save me $$. It arrived quickly and sealed. Nearly flawless plug and play but it did require a little Googling during the software installation. I ran into trouble that Windows was blocking the installation requiring Administrator access regardless that I am the admin of my own computer. If you find you run into trouble installing the PowerDVD software that comes with this drive, try the following which was taken from the Microsoft Answers Community Forum:1. type "command prompt" into the search bar and then RIGHT click it to "Run as Administrator".2. in the command prompt window type "net user administrator /active:yes" and it should follow with "The command completed successfully" message.3. from the Start window and your user profile, click it to change to the Administrator profile and wait for it to be set up.4. locate the setup.exe file for the software and install it.5. switch back to your original user profile from the Start window.6. to disable the Admin account access the Command Prompt with Admin rights and type "net user administrator /active:no" which will also be followed by the message "The command completed successfully"This worked perfectly for me, and the software has had no issues reading the DVDs I placed in the drive. The drive initial disc spin up has a little bit of noise but then the drive quiets back down and is not noticeable during playback. Highly recommend this drive with its included PowerDVD software.

I bought this cd drive to replace an off brand one I had to send back. This one works great! It came with a cd and all I had to do is insert the cd and plug the USB into the computer. The software loaded automatically and within two or three minutes I was using the drive. The instructions were easy to understand and follow, truly "plug and play".

Ok I finally got around to plugging this into an old laptop running windows 7 but did not work until I downloaded the VLC media player. This got a DVD running fine, but I only had a few minutes to test it out. Device seems good, but apparently when using the VLC downloaded program you need to keep the volume down not too high or you could blow out your speakers due to a software incompatibility. I don't have time to sit and read the multitude of info on this issue. If any of you can offer some clarity in simplified form I will be happy to hear it :-) I did not even open the CD that came with the device, since other reviewers said it was useless.

The player plugs in and works just fine. HOWEVER. The included media suite CD isn't installable, won't work on Windows 10 or 11 anyway, and should go straight into the trash before you waste your day trying everything under the sun to get their media suite thing working. Your regular Windows Media Player will play and burn CDs just fine.I see that another user has put up directions that used to work to install the software, it but that is no longer possible on Win 10 or 11.

Update: Maybe the quick connect to my laptop was beginner's luck - I haven't always been so successful lately. Plus I got a 6-foot cord which has the proper plugs but using it seems to make it even harder to get the computer to recognize the drive than with the short original cord. I'm getting almost superstitious in my attempts to get the laptop to recognize the drive: boot the computer with/without the drive plugged in, try to connect the drive with/without a disk in the drive, long cord, short cord, etc. I usually get the computer to recognize the drive and the disc eventually but i haven't worked out the correct formula yet. I'm lowering the rating from 5 stars to 4.Original review: Based on some other reviews I read, I was a little concerned about whether the drive was truly plug-and-play, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it it connected to my Lenovo laptop right out of the box with no muss, no fuss. It remains to be seen how long the drive will last, but so far it's performing admirably. My only complaint at this point in time is that the cable is too short, and longer cables are hard to find and quite pricey. Yeah I should have paid more attention to the photos in the listing, they do show quite clearly how short the cable is, so mea culpa, but I still think the supplied cable should be about twice as long. So if you're OK with a 2-foot cable, I recommend this drive without reservation. But if you ever want use the drive while your laptop is on your lap, you may wish you had a longer cable.

After buying the ones that were half this price from Amazon. Or off eBay. Or off TikTok shop. None of those worked. Of course Amazon's packaging these days are hit or miss. I don't know why you would put a delicate piece of electronics in a paper bag and hand it to a guy in a big brown truck thinking that it would work when it got here. But this one was well boxed and I haven't had one problem with it. I still have some CDs that I've had from the '80s and they work perfect in them. No I don't have a mullet. But I did just go see a RATT tribute band and a Def Leppard tribute band in the same night. They were awesome and it really took you back in time. But as far as this goes it's a good buy if you need one it works

Works perfectly ! Plug and and play ! Very pleased with this purchase ! I have a desktop computer and this longer cable plug works so much better than the really short one that most of these units come with.