Such an obvious slip-up is easily understood; Windows XP, an application capable of DVD playback and CD writing must support DVD burning, surely? After all the application has been through three service packs and is still the most widely used distribution of Windows in the world. The sad truth is that support for DVD writing wasn’t considered important when XP was released seven years ago and since then Microsoft bizarrely haven’t seen fit to supply an update. Whilst Vista does support DVD writing it can’t handle HD standards such as HD-DVD or Blu-Ray so even Vista users may find the following software that I’m about to recommend of interest.

In the past I have very briefly touched on Deepburner (www.deepburner.com) which whilst an incredibly capable program hasn’t been updated sufficiently over the last couple of years for me to feel I can continue to recommend it; HD media support for example is still completely absent. Those still using Windows 98 may still wish to keep it in mind however as Deepburner is still compatible with this antiquated Operating System.

The alternative is an application called CDBurnerXP (www.cdburnerxp.se) which would appear to be a much more rounded piece of software due to the sheer number of features that you get compared to other free products on the market. You can, for example, burn to practically any disc including CD-R/CD-RW/DVD+R/DVD-R/DVD+RW/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM/BD(Blu-Ray)/HD-DVD and any dual layer variants. In terms of supported formats the range is equally impressive; if you choose to burn a CD for instance then you can import your songs in mp3, wav, ogg, flac and wma formats as well as importing playlists in M3U or WPL standards and track layouts by way of CUE sheets.

The software supports burning images so that you can create a virtual CD image; this is especially useful if you want to create an EXACT copy of the disc on another form of media such as a Hard Drive. Of course the software can handle burning the image back to disc along with converting and manipulating any images you may receive off others; over the Internet for example.

Amazingly the application is a tiny 2.8mb download however it does have the drawback of requiring Windows 2000 or above along with relying on the Microsoft .Net Framework. The .Net software is designed to allow programmers to develop Windows applications faster and more easily and whilst some users complain of speed issues it is becoming a lot more commonplace.

Downloading .Net isn’t an issue as it is available free of charge off the Microsoft website and in all probability you have most likely had it installed unbeknown to you at some point in the past when you installed a dependent application or performed a Windows Update. My advice would be to try installing CDBurnerXP and if .Net isn’t detected the application will give you instructions on how to proceed.

I do have a fairly fast connection so such a download wouldn’t have taken a particularly long period of time but despite what anyone may say 190mb is a stupidly large download for a piece of recording software, no matter how good it may be. When you add to the equation the cost of Nero I went off in search of a suitable alternative and found it in the form of the completely free, 3mb piece of software that is Deepburner (www.deepburner.com)

Whenever I recommend a piece of software I always get a handful of insults from readers who head off to the website, see a version of the software you have to pay for and then accuse me of lying – This happens whenever I mention AVG which is available in both paid for and free versions. For this reason I will point out that there is both a free and paid version of Deepburner available on the website given above so please ensure that you download the correct one.

The download and installation of Deepburner couldn’t be simpler and whilst the features that it offers are fairly simplistic they should be sufficient for most home users. In terms of the basic functionality you have the option to burn to create Data CD’s, Bootable CD’s, Audio CD’s and Data DVD’s as well as printing the appropriate labels for your discs.

One of the most important features is the ability to create and burn ISO images which even the most recent version of Windows can’t do as standard. ISO images are typically downloaded off the Internet (off Torrent sites for example) as they are entire discs compressed in to one file which is then downloaded and uncompressed on to a disc making the copying of software particularly straightforward. Of course you need to ensure that you’re not downloading copyrighted software off the Internet but that goes without saying.

Whilst you’re on the Deepburner site do check out Deepripper which is another free piece of software which allows you to quickly and easily rip (copy) audio tracks directly off your audio CD’s on to your PC’s hard disk in MP3, OGG or WAV format. Whilst Windows media player has this functionality I do feel that Deepburner does a cleaner, faster job.

Deepburner is compatible with all versions of Windows so this is particularly good news for people still stuck using an older version of Windows such as 95 or 98 which doesn’t support CD writing without the need for additional software. Whilst the program in no way replaces more sophisticated programs such as Nero it does cover all the basics and once again proves you don’t necessarily need to pay for good quality, capable software.