As you probably know, CD-DA standard (I don't remember the colour of the book ) does not provide for accurate positioning on read requests (besides, read errors are handles in less robust way). Some CD-ROM drives include hardware intended to correct for these positioning errors (jitter - the term is also used for other classes of errors). Plextor SCSI drives have reputation for excellent hardware jitter correction (and, consequently, better and much faster rips). If you need more info, I think there are people on the board who work with these things professionally...

I would recommend one of Plextor SCSI CD-ROM/CD-R/CD-RW drives (in addition to DVD drive). While you are not interesting in burning your own CDs (DA or ROMs with MP3s), I think you should back up your MP3s on something more or less permanent.

Concerning disk drive's rotational speed, I think you will barely be able to tell the difference between 5400 and 7200 RPM models, unless you plan to use your machine for havy database work or have too little physical memory (and consequently a lot of paging and/or swapping).

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green