I have the Aopen 1232 and I couldn't be more pleased! I too read Tom's article and a few other sources and that was enough for me. It kills me when I read posts about how bad this drive is from people who have never even owned one of them, then they tell you the brand they have is the best, mostly Plex drives. Yes the plex drives are more than likely the king of the hill but it doesn't mean the other burners should bow down and fade away! For the price($160 shipped) you can't beat it, I would have had to buy last years plex model to match that and I want to be faster than that! My drive doesn't have the burn proof stuff but I haven't needed it either. I can do almost anything with the machine while it burns at 12x and still no coasters, not bad eh? All I'm saying is it might not have had the best name in the world, but this product itself is a winner, and I believe most burner problems are not the burners fault, its the user or the user's system. I read too that 98 percent of ALL returned hardware is not defective, its the user can't get it to work with their system. My advise, if you don't want to spend $250 or more for a plex, get this baby- you'll love it!
Mike