I'm pleased to report that the new Plextor drive is working well. I'm annoyed to report that the software I got, which is the standard U.S. distribution, doesn't include nearly as many toys as the European distribution that was described in CDFreaks. My bad. U.S. people get the Roxio Easy CD/DVD Creator, version 6.

My first burn was a coaster, but after that it seems to be working fine. (I think I ejected it too early or something.) The speed difference between the 8x and 4x media is impressive. I burned about 3.8GB of pictures for a friend, and the difference is 5 minutes vs. 10 minutes. Still, 4x media is much cheaper than 8x media, so by the time I burn through my current box of 4x, the 8x stuff should be available and cheap.