Hi Moosey, I would highly advise against an Aopen drive. I have had my Aopen 1232a cdrw for about 6 months so far. After burning a number of audio CDs, the drive refused to burn at 12x... using Nero or any similiar program, the drive would at first spin up, and then an error message would appear.
Also, about the Aopen 24 burner, if you enable the JustLink Technology (Aopen's version of Burnproof), the drive has problems writing certain media at 24x.
I would recommend going for the Lite-On, from what I've heard at the forums its an excellent drive.