As a creature of habit, I have found myself sticking to software I know and trust.  However when my buring software left me with a stack of dead CD's, I knew it was time to search out a new solution.  ImgBurn came highly recommended to me, so I gave it a try.  It is now my favorite software for burn jobs, and since it was freeware I thought that the best way to thank the creators was to share this program with others.  This is my review, please try out this program for yourselves. 

ImgBurn: A freeware CD/DVD burning utility.
http://www.imgburn.com/  Version 2.4.2.0 tested on WinXP SP3

After a large number of failed data CD burns with professional software, a fellow poweruser reccomended ImgBurn as the solution to the problem I was having.  I had tried several types of recordable media, swapped out drives, and thought that possibly my downloaded images were corrupt, tried three different professional burning applications, and despite ruling all these potential problems out all I had was a bunch of CD's that did not pass the initial scan.  ImgBurn fixed the problem, with a 100% burn/scan success rate compared to the 10% I was getting from the best of the three other apps used.

Downloading and installing the application was quick and simple, 1,925kb and had a very professional install/uninstall wizard.  Running the application brings up a windowed graphical menu that was simpler and more direct than I had been used to in other burning apps.  As my task required me to burn an .iso file to a disk, I selected the first option "write image file to disk" and got straight to work.  What really impressed me was how aware this program was of my media.  As I had none in the drive when I started the program, many things were greyed out as not applicable because of the lack of recordable media in the drive.  However, when I inserted a blank disk, all the greyed out information quickly started filling in with data relevant to the blank media.  This program uses a very proactive scanning routine, and better yet lets be just as aware of what media is present.  As a self described poweruser I like to see readouts and specs, and at the same time the program is still very graphical and easy to use.  Clicking an icon shaped like a magnifying glass on top of a folder allowed me to searc for my .iso file, and once found, clicking the big icon at the bottom started the job.  Very simple to use indeed.

As my burn job commenced, I saw three progress meters that as a poweruser I like to be able to see.  The top one was an overall job completion meter, the second was a software buffer, and the third was the hardware buffer.  Buffers are essential part to burning data in a fluid way so that the beam on the burner burns from start to finish uninterrupted.  While seeing the status of these buffers was highly unimportant to the job, it was nice to see anyway just so that I knew that my software load wasnt bogging down the stream of data to the burner and causing errors.  After the burn completed, it ejected the disk and then re-examined the disk for errors.  Not a neccesary step, as the professional software I used would only do that when prompted and didn't eject the media but scanned it in place.  However, as I had been plauged with small data loss problems I'm very happy that the software took this step.

A little bit of reading off of thier website shows a lot of versitility in building different CD and DVD types, with a wide file support for audio CD's, DVD file types, and Data CD's and DVD's.  This software has a lot to offer both beginners and powerusers, and best of all its free!