Most people underestimate how versatile the optical drive on their computer is. Most, if not all computers purchased in the past 5 years have a built in optical drive which will not only read optical media but also write or burn it.

Naturally, over the years the type of media has evolved. In the early days of Windows XP, the only writeable optical media were CD-Rs and CD-RWs. These had just taken over the pole position from 1.44MB floppy drives and higher capacity magnetic media such as ZIP Drives.

But even the simple 700MB CD-R media was versatile, allowing users to store data in multiple sessions or as a finalized disc. Windows XP offered limited built-in support for writing CD-Rs. This prevented users from doing tasks such as creating bootable CDs or writing ISO images onto CDs. Users also could not write other media such as DVDs and HD media.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 have addressed some of these shortcomings but still lack many of the features present in commercially available third-party disc authoring software. However, this posed another problem as users feel they should not have to pay additional money to be able to utilize their optical drives to the fullest.

This is where StarBurn Disc Burning Software comes to the rescue. Developed by StarBurn Software, this disc burning software comes with a very wide range of features. Some of these include, the ability to write to any optical drive format available today including CD, DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Naturally, all media formats are supported as well including CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE, HD-DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM media, including high-capacity double layer DVD+R and dual layer DVD-R.

The software can also perform audio processing including ripping of CD Tracks and on the fly burning of compressed audio formats such as MP3 and WMA without having to decompress them on the hard disk first. This translates into less time spent waiting for the burning process to complete.

It also supports additional features such as importing of previously recorded sessions on multi-session discs, Track-At-Once and Disc-At-Once recording modes, creation of bootable discs, and the ability to convert a Double-Layer DVD (also known as DVD9) into 2 regular DVDs.

StarBurn Software offers two versions of their award winning dvd burning application, StarBurn Free edition and StarBurn full edition. The best thing about this is that the Free Edition is a very usable and rather complete application in itself, and contains all of the features mentioned above.

The only feature which StarBurn Free edition does not have is the ability to record to a remote CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD burner over TCP/IP. What this means is that the Full Version of StarBurn allows you to network your optical disc burner much like you can network your printers. The StarBurn Full Version costs USD 25, but helps lower operational costs and provides better control over security and media usage by centralizing the optical media recording process over the network. This translates into cost savings many times over the cost of the software.

For software developers, StarBurn Software also provides a cd-dvd burning SDK or Software Development Kit. This too comes into two editions, namely, Free and Full. StarBurn Software is one of very few software developers to release a fully featured free edition cd-dvd burning SDK.

Supporting Microsoft Visual C/C++, Microsoft VB.NET and C#, Java and JavaScript, Borland C++ Builder and Delphi, this SDK will allow developers to easily integrate optical drive burning features right into their applications easily. This is especially useful for providing features such as backup to discs or to export and archive large file formats to optical media.

The Full Version of the StarBurn SDK provides the additional feature of being able to write to a remote CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD burner over the network, much like the equivalent full featured application.

To find out more about this free, excellent and easy to use product, visit http://www.starburnsoftware.com

*UPDATE : You might experience difficulty connecting to Maxis 3G. This is because Maxis has made some changes to the Maxis Data connection settings. You might also get new settings messages from Maxis asking you to update the GRPS/MMS/3G settings on your phone. If you are not experienced with the settings, you might want to save and activate them. If however, you are technically inclined, you can just make the following changes to your existing settings : Remove the username ‘maxis’ and the password ‘wap’ from the settings. Leave both of these blank and you will be able to connect to the Internet immediately.

Summary : You no longer need to include a username and password (traditionally ‘maxis’ and ‘wap’ respectively) for your Maxis 3G/GPRS/MMS settings.
I just got this SMS from Maxis, saying:

NEW monthly Mobile Internet plans available. RM 58 for 500MB, RM 78 for 1.5GB & RM 88 for 3GB worth of usage. Details on maxis.com.my. You may stay on your current RM 99 monthly Unlimited Access Mobile Internet plan (Fair Usage Policy applies).

Very interesting. A quick check on the Maxis website shows the new plans. But the million dollar question I had was can I switch back to the Unlimited Plan if I choose to switch to any of the limited plans. A phonecall to the Maxis Call Center revealed that NO, you cannot switch back to RM 99 unlimited plan.

Basically, Maxis has stopped offering the RM 99 Unlimited plan, if you are on it, you can continue being on it. If however, you choose a limited plan, there’s no turning back to the Unlimited plan. You can however, switch between the limited plans.

Interesting. I initially thought of switching to the RM 78 for 1.5GB plan, but considering its only 21 Ringgit less a month, PLUS not being able to switch back to RM 99 for the unlimited plan, I will probably stick to the unlimited plan for now.

So if you are considering switching to the limited plan, you may want to give the above points a thought.
FYI : I rely on the Mobile Internet not just for surfing on my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, but also for surfing on my laptop via Bluetooth (I shall cover how to do this soon).

I have had my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic for 3 months already now, and absolutely love it. It is truly one of the best deals in the mobile market today in terms of both price and performance.

Every now and then I browse through the Nokia Ovi Store and download new application and utilities on it.

A couple of days ago, a strange thing began happening on my device, it began displaying seemingly random digits in a gray box in the top right hand corner of my phone, be it in portrait or landscape mode. The digits are displayed in NN.NN format, where N can be any digit from 0-9.

I immediately fired up my browser and Googled it up,  and no one seemed to have an answer for this problem. I somehow felt it was something I did recently on my phone, like installing a certain software. So I began to uninstall programs on my phone one by one until I found the culprit! It was none other than the Nokia Mobile Web Server.  Its a nifty application which enables you to run a webserver on your mobile phone, and allows you and your friends to access your phone over the Internet with a simple web browser.

Immediately after I uninstalled it, the weird digits in the top right hand corner of the phone screen disappeared! So if you are experiencing the same issue on your phone, this quick fix will cure your phone from the annoying digits. You may want to install the Nokia Mobile Web Server after it comes out of beta.