CD Burner / The Best

You'd be hard-pressed to make a "bad" purchase if you stick with a Hewlett-Packard or Creative Labs model, amongst others. They'll work great, last a long time, and are easily obtainable at Best Buy or CompUSA.

There is a lot of music available on the net, but you'd have to first define what "high quality" means to you as well as your morals on the issue of "available music" to give you a definitive answer on how much is available. There is a lot more 128Kb MP3 music available than true CD-quality or even 320Kb MP3 music. Nobody is legally giving away CD-quality music over the net for free, at least of bands that are at all famous.

Plextor (latest models are 12x write speed) - you may have to look around to find one, but they are the best.

Saw an article somewhere recently that said TDK (the tape company) has an exceptional unit.

I have to agree with all of the above posts. I own 2 HPs and think they are great. I have also read positive reviews on Plextor and the new TDK VeloCD drives These will be faster than HP, but also more expensive.

Definitely the Plextor units. They have an amazing ability to rip audio at very high speeds yet remain jitter-free in doing so. I personally own the Plextor 12x4x32 (which is the best one out of the 4 different ones I own (Teac, Pinnacle, Sony, Mitsumi)) They just came out with a newer unit which is 12x10x32 if I remember correctly, and it has the "burn-proof" technology to prevent trashing CDRs. The Plextor units are substantially more money that the other units, but are worth every penny IMHO.

I echo the sentiments of those extolling the virtues of the Plextor drives. They are without doubt the best drives for digital audio extraction on the market. Eric is spot-on in his assessment of them. Exceptional units. -Dave S.