I just bought an 500M. It does DAE very fast with firmware 1.07, about 35x (it does reach around 47x). Data transfer is about 32x, not that fast really. The drive is not quiet. It reads DVD-Video disc @ an avg. of 6.00x and DVDROM @ about 7x. Not the fastest drive...but I think I notice about it is that it's quite heavy.