Top 3 Freeware CD Burning Programs

Optical media like DVD-R and CD-R have come a long way from the days when they were regarded more as an enthusiast level product. They are now the preferred form of backup and for end-users among the only options. Though NAS drives do exist for use at home-level now, these are expensive and out of reach for the common person.

As optical media began to achieve its mass market appeal, it also helped a number of companies gain grass-root level recognition for the products. One such company is “Ahead” a European firm, whose product Nero is today widely regarded as the de facto standard for CD burning. This excellent program, over the years has grown from strength to strength and added multiple features as the need for DVD-writers grew. However this has led to a very sorry situation. Nero once used to set the standard for being a light-weight and easy program. However with the addition of more and more features and a GUI redesign, Nero has lost that touch. It is simply bloatware today offering features that most end-users will never use and simply do not really need.

Keeping this fact in mind, our featured downloads for this week is 3 free burning programs. These can not only replace Nero quite easily with simpler GUIs and less cluttered features, but also place less strain on our systems. Read on...

Publisher: CDburner XP Pro

Size:11.02 Mb

Download: 1

CDBurner XP Pro offers is a well written program, which offers a comprehensive list of features and a very intuitive GUI. It offers full support for Burn-Proof writers, CD-DVD authoring including data, audio and multisession, cover printing for jewel cases, image burning capability (both NRG and ISO) and supports every major Windows OS from Windows 98 upwards. The only thing this excellent program, can’t do right now is burn DVD-DL media. This will be fixed in an upcoming release.

With such a huge range of features and support for virtually every writer out there, it makes me wonder why it is not a paid product. Whatever the reason maybe, I hope it continues to remain freeware... forever.