LiteOn is a really decent Burner.
This one here the
correct link is a little high priced. I cannot recall exactly what I had paid for mine, but it was a dual layer lightscribe. Ultra fast burner. Reliable too. This is 24X write speed, while cheaper models do 8X. That's why the price. But believe me, worth every penny to have a good drive.
However you can still get burners cheap with lightscribe around 30$. Again only 8X write speeds.
Example. Notice in details there's no description for the read and write speeds. Probably a 4X lol.
I own that exact model in your first link, bought right from NewEgg. I bought it for 19.99 4 years ago. A gray foam disk was found on top of a CD recently, and tech supports seems to think it's time to replace the drive.
I believe the reason that drive goes for 249$ is because it's a few years old, and thus there aren't may anymore and has Lightscribe, among a few other features. It was cheap years ago.
I believe for LiteON, this is the closest model to ours.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106393
Ours has a 2Meg buffer, this one has 512Kb buffer. Some of the speeds are different.
The LiteOn iHAS 124-14, other than the above mentioned differences, has the following differences
Write Speed:
CD-RW
24X
DVD+R DL
8X
DVD-R DL
8X
DVD-RAM
5X\
The model I have has the following speeds w/the 2meg buffer
Write Speed:
CD-RW
32X
DVD+R DL
12X
DVD-R DL
12X
DVD-RAM
12X
Aside from those slower speeds, which I'm not fond of esp for the CD-RW drop in speed, they seem to be the same, minus the Lightscribe.
I think I'm going to go with this ASUS, speeds are the same as my old drive, and the buffer is 2megs unlike the LiteOn I listed above. This will be the first non-LiteOn drive I have had in over 16 years...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204