If speed and price didn't count, depending on reliability:

1. Plextor
2. HP
3. Yamaha
4. Memorex
5. Sony(All of the Sony CD-RW's that i've used are super slow, crap, and really bad. <_< )

That surprises me.....especially since HP is so high in your list....a lot of HP burners are actually rebadged Sony drives.
Sony doesn't hardly make any new cd-r/rw drive themselves lately,they started rebadging too,using LiteOn and Ricoh oem drives...

@roadworker
The HP that I have is REALLY old, it's a 4x, but it still works great. The Sony that I used was a 48x, and it stunk. It was burning REALLY slow, even with 48x media.

billybob3,was DMA enabled ?
Most probs about slow burning speed are caused by highspeed cdr-w drives that are running in PIO mode,instead of DMA...a 4X burner is hardly affected by that setting,but a 48X depends on it to get it's full burning speed!:)

@roadworker

Ya, I don't know for sure, the Sony was at school...and if you change any settings there, the Computer Admin will try to butt rape :o you. He's crazy! :lamo:

LiteOn

Plextor

Yamaha

HP