I have an Acer 12X writer on my old dell. To tell you the truth, I've already burned hundreds of CDs on it, and I never got a coaster. I'm not sure if Acers are still good though. The old one I have is definately top-notch. So, out of Teac and Acer, I would chose Acer. However, if i had more variety to choose from, I would recommend you to get the Lite-On because it's cheap and so far, I have had no problems with 24x writer on my new computer (ie no coasters, good speed). Whatever you do, don't get a Sony branded CDRW, I know for sure that it sucks. My roomate gets coasters on that all the time.