I too am looking into getting a new CD-RW. I just gave my old one to my Dad. It was an HP 8100. Great burner for it's time, but had issues, particularly with burning 80 minute CDs.

Working here at MusicMatch, I figured I'd take advantage of the knowledge on CD-Rs and ripping and find out opinions on all the equipment around. I think we have just about every major CD-R/CD-RW drive around for testing. We even have a few DVD-R drives (Mmmmmm, 4.7GB).

So, I asked our chief engineer who develops the burning drivers what he thought for CD-RW recommendations. Of course he said Plextor. What's interesting though, is the model he recommended. He told me that there are three different versions of the 24x10x40A drive out, and two of them have serious problems with them. He also said the 16x10x32A was just bad. He highly recommended getting the 12x10x32A, which he said works great. Since I think 12x is still plenty fast for me, I'm getting that model.