It is great to have a fast, 'current' CD/DVD disc burner and this one Rocks to 11! Specs are: Digital Audio rip speed: 40x; DVD speeds for DVD+RW: 16x4x16x; DVD-RW: 8x4x16x; DVD+R DL: 2.4x. CD speeds are: CD-R: 40x; CD-RW: 24x; CD-ROM: 40x. It's $169 MSRP. Nowadays these discs can be played back via a wider range of devices (DVD players, car CD players, other computers, etc). Check: www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10122

LightScribe technology, designed and licensed by the Hewlett-Packard Company, is a new way to use the same laser that burns data on the disc to burn permanent, silkscreen-quality images directly on the other side of the disc. The LightScribe image is hologram-like in a gold-sepia tone and looks like it was produced at a big record label factory. Surely your CD/DVD disc will stand out amongst discs with inkjet-printed paper labels!

The LaCie d2 drive comes with LightScribe Labeler software in versions for both MAC OSX and Windows PCs allowing you to custom design your CD/DVD's label using an intuitive program. You can drag and drop images and text and rearrange those elements around the useable circular disc area. There are eighteen, starting templates with typical user motifs: disc storage of baby or dog pictures, music or portfolios, office data, or travel/party pix. The templates have plenty of space to type in names, tracks or song titles and in the edit mode you can further customize these generic templates. Once you've got it just like you want, just flip the CD/DVD disc upside down in the drive and click "print". It can take up to a half hour to burn a full disc picture at highest quality but the system can burn in the background and the results are stunning! Check: www.lightscribe.com/

You're going to need special LightScribe media and Verbatim has LightScribe discs in 52X CD-R discs and 8X DVD+R versions with ten-packs of CD-Rs selling for about $9. I've found Verbatim discs excellent for all my CD/DVD music and data storage. Check www.verbatim.com.