Why is the Mitsubishi such a piece of crap?
 

Bit of confusion on my part, (it is the Mitsubishi not the Mitsumi). But this stupid drive does absolutley nothing.

I'm open to correction here if I'm wrong, but it doesn't support RAW DOA and I don't think it even reads it.
I hear Phillips is good? Whats the take on this RAW thing?

Mitsumi is diffirent than Mitsubishi. Philips are pretty good and RAW is a CDR recording method. It reads and writes as is with no modifications so I think it is the best in combination with Disc-At-Once.