Y. S. Prakash recently wrote regarding CDROMS:
 
< CDROMs!  No way!  My biased opinion, for sure!  But we tried the
<CDROM recorder from Pinnacle (2002 or something like that) with
<software running under Windows.  WRITING SESSIONS TO THE CDROM IS A
<PAIN!!  The problem is that .......(much deleted text!)"
 
Clearly there can be problems with any system. We have used CD ROMS
now for 12 months. There were problems in the early days, but
experience (and time) has attended to most of them as it usually
does.
 
We have no experience with the Pinnacle system. It is the cheapest by
far and makes some pretty big claims.
We use the Philips CDD521 recorder and Corel SCSI 2.0. We started
using a fancy (and expensive) recording software and have not
regretted moving to the $100 Corel software. We have made about 40 or
so disks without problems with this setup. We make duplicates ALWAYS.
Corel SCSI is a DOS based program which can use extended memory to
buffer data to the writer. We write directly to discs without making
the image files referred to above. Image files are used by
writing packages that can add audio, video etc onto the CD and they
are overkill for archival purposes. You don't need that expensive and
problematic software to archive data to CDROM.
You can record up to 99 separate sessions using this COREL SCSI to a
CDROM. However, there may be compatibility problems since the windows
MS CDX driver has problems reading multisession disks. You can
solve this in two ways. Have all your users use the COREL CDX
driver or try to make single session disks. Remember since the
price of CDs is now around $12.00,  writing even 100 megs as
a single session may be a viable alternative.
    The major advantage for CDroms is cost and compatibility - we
have MACs, Silicon Graphics and DOS computers all with CDroms
- and our users represent each of these platforms. The data we
collect on our MRC 1000 using DOS is easily transportable to our MAC
users via CDROM. The CD ROM has become a really useful and inexpensive
 means of transferring data between platforms. We also have 2
different optical disks that we have used for the past 5 years and
the CDROM is cheaper to run if a little less convenient to use.
The recorders may be a little more expensive than opticals, but
that is changing too. At least I have confidence that CD readers will
be able to read the disks for another 5 years of so - which may not
be the case for the dozens of optical disk formats currently
available.
 
Yes, there were problems initially, but they should not be problems
you need to repeat if you purchase time-tested systems as we have
described. Much of the problem may be associated with the totally
unintelligible (and often incorrect) manuals that come with these
technologies.
 
Paul Robinson
Purdue University Cytometry Laboratories
 
J.Paul Robinson, Purdue University Cytometry Labs