Oh...Hulaboy...the reason I have been swayed away from the Plextor is primarily because of the lack of attention to detail when it comes to the software package.  The old Adeptek Easy CD Creator (before Roxio spun off from Adeptek) is still version 4.x  Plextor is probably suffering a bit of market decline   because they have not kept up with the times.  The old software that they include is well over a year old.  Darn...I'm in the office so I can't give you a reference...but a recent review (it may have been one from PC World) stated that even though the Plextor drive was a good one...that the burn times for the 16x10x40x were not much better than the 12x versions.  That and the fact that they include the old software package made it a burner that they could not strongly recommend.  I had always wanted a Plextor until I started reading some of this stuff.  This made me look elsewhere and what I found was the TDK.