After some careful review the past week or so, i've decided to go
with the pioneer. 5th generation, -R media is cheaper and the drive
is more readily available then the sony (and cheaper to boot). I also
see no benefit to +R at all after reading up on it.

My question now is about plugging it into an external case - probably a
firewire case since my motherboard is only USB 1.1. I'm also out of
IDE ports (and have a SIIG PC133 add in card - 8 drives, 440GB total
with a Plextor and DVD-Rom for high speed ripping. It's also nice to be
able to take it places and share with other machines.

So questions:

1) who makes the best firewire external case - and what is the best chipset to go with?

2) are their any problems in burning to a firewire drive? not that their should be, but you never know.

3) are these firewire/usb external cases - externally powered by their own
power supply? or do they draw power on the case ps?

Thanks in advance.

-d