Fry's - 50 pack cd-r's, $4.99

[MidnightFlyer]

Just thought I'd pass this on. While browsing Fry's, trying to decide which of the many brands of blank CD-R's to buy, I settled on a 50 pack of Memorex CD-R's for $14.99. Imagine my surprise when the cashier told me there's a $10 rebate on this. She gave me forms to take home and fill out. Now $10 isn't a lot of money, and it's a hassle to fill the form and mail it. But I'm gonna do it anyway. I think $4.99 is great price for 50 Memorex CD-R's.

[Kickin.da.speaker]

I bought them about 4 months ago, sent the rebate form, never got any money back and the CDs are crappy. They won't be read by anything but the computer I burnt them on.

Memorex is about the worst brand of CD-Rs I've ever had to deal with, and I've dealt with my share of no-name cheap CD-Rs.

If you want cheap CD-Rs, may I suggest http://store.yahoo.com/yesbuy/74minsilblu2.html ? Good luck to you with your rebate, but don't put your hopes too high.

[MidnightFlyer]

Thanks for the heads up. I haven't opened them yet. I'll return them tomorrow. [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[Duardo]

I've had the opposite experience...I've purchased all kins of CDR's, including Memorex, with rebates (sometimes you can even get them for free, especially at office-supply stores) and never had one not come back. Sometimes they take a while, but I've never had it take four months...save copies of your receipts and all of the rebate forms and you should be able to follow up on things.

Having said that, even though I've had good luck with those CD's, whenever I'm sending something I've mastered for a client off for duplication I'll always use an archival-grade CD...usually a gold Apogee or HHb. It's probably not necessary, but it can't hurt...

On another side note, do any of you remember Cyberrebates.com? They sold DVD's and all kinds of stuff that were free after rebates...the catch was it would take like three months for the rebate to come, and the prices were insanely high (like $150 for a DVD). I guess they'd invest the money in the meantime or something like that, and three months of interest on a credit card isn't a bad price to pay for a DVD. My wife's brother bought all kinds of stuff there and told us about it...we went online to buy three DVD's and neither of us had brought our wallets downstairs and both of us were too lazy to go upstairs to get them, so we just decided to do it later...within a week they declared bankrupcy. I guess we got off lucky...

-Duardo

[Jean Chile]

The one and only time I bought Memorex CD-r's (It was a late nite thing from a grocery store)....50 cds total...14 coasters....4 wouldn't work on anything else but my mac....I will never buy that crap again.

Keep in mind if you look around at some media places you can get cdrs at a very reasonable price for great quality. The silver label ones I get from a company called "Media Right" cost me 12 cents a piece and I have never had one coaster in over 1500 burns. And when I put a sticker on the top there is no label showing through.

[kris whitten]

I get the hotan or gq (good quality)

From frys ALL THE TIME.

Not only are they the cheapest, they work perfectly, and like someone else said nothing shows through the label.

Beware of the myth that certain types of cd's are "better" than others....

This isn't tape... [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[cayugalad]

Fry's had the GQ discs for some insanely low price (50 blanks for $5 or something) a month or so ago, and I stocked up (even though they said one to a customer. I finagled a couple hundred of them), and I have had no probs whatsoever, burning or reading. Just my $.02.

[dBHEAD]

I've also had bad experience with Memorex, though the worst I ever used were called Teon. My opinion is that Memorex simply doesn't make good products. The way they used to market their cassette tapes (who could forget, "Is It Live or Is It Memorex?"), at one time (25 years ago) I thought Memorex were the best cassettes you could get. It didn't take long before I realized that you were were paying for a very hyped up ad campaign, not a quality cassette. Memorex cassettes weren't just bad, they were audibly worse than almost any other cassette made, even the cheapos.

Same problem with their VHS cassettes. Dropout City, baby - I mean they were terrible! And believe me, I wouldn't make this assertion based on a few bad experiences. This was a recurring theme. I generally don't pay attention to the tape brand unless there's a problem, and there was an unusually high correlation between problem tapes and the Memorex brand. I would say that more than half the problem tapes I had to deal with were Memorex.

I don't have as much experience with their CDs, but I built up such a bias against Memorex from their tape I'm not sure I could judge objectively. I just associate Memorex with crap. I have used them; I bought a couple 50 disc spindles at Wall Mart because that was all they had -- these weren't going to be used for anything important so el cheapos were okay. I've almost finished the first spindle and while I've only had two coasters (still too high a percentage, IMHO), I've had an unusual number which failed verification because part of a sector couldn't be read. They seemed to work okay, but it leaves you wondering what part of the data was corrupt and should you burn another one.

[toddm7]

GQs are the worst according to my experience.

[OzzyOsmond]

For me it's Fry's store that is terrible not their stuff!