Very fast. Burned a Fedora core 4 DVD in 5 min. and then it verified it in another 5, using K3B. Burns CD's for me in about 3 min. flat. No problems here.

Drive had constant read errors. Went back to NEC and then returned "fixed". Can play DVDs, burn DVDs, but gets read errors on its own DVDs still. Drive craps out and stops responding to everything (umount -l /dev/hdc being the only thing which does anything, then eject /dev/hdc fails to work) with sickening motor sounds that only a reboot can fix.

I tried many different media. I have also replaced my 80wire IDE which was fairly long with an ultra-short shielded 80wire IDE, so the possibility of EMI is ruled out. It could be something to do with both versions (hoary and dapper) of ubuntu that I am using, but if you google around there are other people with other problems with this drive on other distros.

I strongly recommend against this drive as, for me, the drive doesn't work as a DVDR and is not fit for sale as such.

I put "AUD" after $80 but it was cropped. So the $80 I state refers to Australian dollars.