I picked up a 24x10x?? (I forget the read spead) Pine for my wife last year on an Amazon.com deal posted here.. I have no idea what the drive really is, nor do I know how to ID it.. but it's been unsatisfactory. Using TY discs, burning at 24x is flaky, 16x seems reliable. 10x for RW? I've tried a few different RW media, and it won't burn at anything faster than 4x.
The kicker is it came with Nero, which I thought was great until I noticed it was a somewhat outdated version. I tried the most recent Nero, but the drive wasn't even recognized (maybe it works in more recent Nero versions, I haven't checked since I got the drive).