Just an update...
I got my
d2 52x CDRW from LaCie. It's listed as RECON in their Clearence Corner section, on their site. I paid only 99 bucks for it, which I thought was a great price, untill today I noticed they dropped it to $89!
This unit is in their cool d2 case which is very nice. It has a Lite-On (LTR-52246S) mech with firmware v. 6S02 / MMC-3. So far this has worked flawlessly. I'm upgrading from a 12x burner, so the speed increase is amazing. I haven't had a single problem yet and I've burned a number of CDs, including bootable ones (I can boot from the drive as well). I've used Toast Titanium 5.2, iTunes and Finder.
If anybody's looking for a quick CDRW, grab one of these for $89. The package shipped fast also and arrived before it was scheduled to.