Need Help with "Burning or Recording CD's"

I bought an internal CD Burner (Samsung $29.95) for my PC to burn some CD's. Every CD that I have burned has errors or drop outs in the sound. I keep getting the message "Possible read error" before the burn takes place. I am burning at the slowest speed possible and I have defragged my hard drive (whatever that means). I am pretty stupid when it comes to PC's. I don't want to sink a lot of money into this, but would I be better off with a CD Recorder instead of a burner on my PC? I am just looking for a simple reliable way of duplicating some CD's for my personal use. I am from the old school of cassette recorders and they sure seemed easier than all this digital stuff. Thanks in advance for any help.