The two drives are the Plextor PlexWriter24/10/40A and the QPCDRW241040i by QPS, Inc. (which appears to be a rebadged Sanyo CRD-BP1500P). Both are ATAPI drives claiming speeds of 24X CD-R burn, 10X CD-RW burn, and 40X read. Both drives feature Sanyo's BURN-Proof technology to prevent buffer underruns, as well as Z-CLV recording (more on that in a moment). Looking at the features, the drives seem pretty comparable to one another, but we'll see how they perform under pressure.