i currently have a lite on 40x writer, i bought it in janurary for $130, but they have gone down to around $115. Wait a month or so and they will be under $100. Works great with Nero and CDRWin (the only two programs i use to make CDs) The drive is a little loud, or louder then my last 24x lite-on writer, when burning CDs, and I haven't made a coaster yet. I used to have a Yamaha 16X, but when I burn at 16x on good media, it wouldn't get recognized on my Rio Volt CD/mp3 player. The liteon's work at top speed. Someone told me it had to do with the laser intensity.

I noticed that I can't do as much multi-tasking like i used to because everything else just slows down, ie scrolling down a two page paper takes like 10 seconds. I would guess the software program has set the CPU utilization on high. No complaints.

Back in the old skool days before they had 8x writers, I would only get SCSI. But the advancments of IDE have started to shine for many workstations and now I am picking the IDE drives to save money.