The reasoning why the Lite-On burners are so popular is because they're a lot cheaper than most other burners at the same speed, and they can burn basically anything. The 32x Lite-On is around 100 bucks, while I'm pretty sure that comparable Plextor burner would be nearly double that price. Also, the Lite-On burners support correct EFM encoding. This means that with a program like CloneCD you can make 100% perfect, working copies of your CDs. (In particular the Safedisc Version 2 protected CDs, as well as the other types of copy protection out there.) That comes in very handy when you have a lot of CDs that you frequently use. Being able to make back-ups is perhaps the greatest quality of the Lite-On burners.