Not too long ago, the application that was most used for burning was Nero. It did (and still does) the job fast and responsibly. Well, the reign of Nero is no longer at its peak, as many alternatives have appeared on the market.

If all you need is a simple CD burning alternative, XP can be a worthy companion, though it can complete only the simple tasks. If you deal with DVDs, Vista can also bridge the gap in case of emergency (again, with quite a few limitations).

BurnAware seemed like a promising alternative considering it is free and it can deal with both CDs and DVDs as well as with creating Audio CDs. BurnAware Free is a free CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc burning software. It is ideal for users with basic disc burning needs as backup, creating data, audio, MP3 music, DVD-Video discs and burning disc images. Free, easy to set up, it enables you to save your files to disc quickly and provides clean, flexible interface to help you complete your burning tasks much faster. It couldn’t have come with a simpler interface. Any noob can handle it with absolutely no problems.

All the options are lined up in the main pane and all you have to do is choose one. Once released in its final version, BurnAware should be able to complete the basic tasks of disc burning. The four categories available cover burning data, creating Audio CDs, writing images and creating DVDs.

The procedure is simple: pick a task and follow the on-screen instructions. There isn’t much to say about working with BurnAware as the options are scarce and the application practically carries out the job on its own. All you can do is add the files to be written to disc (it seems that it supports CD, DVD5 and DVD9, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs), name it and start the burning process by pressing the red button in the top right part of the screen.

  • 100% Free. No spyware, adware, banners etc.
  • Create data and multisession CD/DVD/Blu-ray Discs
  • Create Audio CDs and Jukebox (MP3/WMA music) CD/DVD/Blu-ray Discs
  • Record boot disc images
  • Create DVD-Video
  • Create and record disc images
  • Supports all current hardware interfaces (IDE/SCSI/USB/1394/SATA)
  • Supports UDF/ISO9660/Joliet Bridged file systems (any combination)
  • On-the-fly writing for all image types (no staging to hard drive first)
  • Auto-verification of written files
  • Supports CD-Text and unicode characters
  • Clean, multilingual, easy to use interface
  • Supports Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista (32 and 64 Bit), no drivers required

Download here