external dvd burners..
 

without spending a ton of money, are there any good external burners out there that will get the job done right and can support programs such as dvd-cloner and/or dvdxcopy?

Depends what you call a ton of money. There is the Sony DRX-500UL. I consider paying $400 for this to be a ton of money especially when you can get a good internal burner for $200.

Yea im with ya on that...$400 is a ton of money...

The problem is i have a laptop and I cant find any internal ones for it so i figured external would be easier...

Yeah that does suck. Kind of a no win situation.:(

I have tried both a CD-R and a DVD -R external and every one i have tried of them they have never worked.

So im giving up and buying only internal writers from now

Sounds like you got a messed up pc Chris.

Nope, wouldn't say anything was wrong with the PC at all.

Both of the writers have been USB and my USB and USB2 are working fine.

external drive case from ADS for about $80, here's a link with a review on the case. usb connection to pc, you can stick a dvd/cd - rom/rw, hard drive in the case. http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20030116/index.html

Here's a link for a UK case. Takes any sort of writer.

www.starmount.co.uk/usb_cd1.htm