This model was quick writing CD-Rs, but mediocre at writing to CD-RW media and extracting digital audio. Also, this is the only 40x drive to limit the write speed for audio CDs.

The first part I have heard about a few times. So many sites seem obsessed over DAE speed, when my system still dosen't go much beyond 5x due to the encoder working at the same time.

The slow audio comment shows they didn't bother reading up on the drive. By what I understand, mine has some feature in it to ensure the best possible burned Audio CD, by sacrificing speed a bit and limiting the burn to 4x. Aparently it adjusts the laser to ensure the best quality based on the media. Nero has the ability to toggle this on or off, so it's probably something thats only needed if the audio cd is headed for a really picky player.

And Mark, my combo drive supports UDMA 2 as reported by the IDE driver utility under W2k. Checking Plextor's site, all of their drives show UDMA or UDMA2 support listed under current products.