I've always trusted the Pioneer drives. Haven't failed me yet. I'm definately a happy Pioneer Writer user. Being a computer tech as well, I've always recommended my customers to Pioneer. Being a big audio electronics based company, always have been suprised with their work in writers. Can't say much for Gigabyte. I can say that their really good with motherboards, but for graphics cards and network based hardware... chuck it in the bin lol.

And yes, CD's are a pain in the butt to change everytime. But partly my fault for not looking carefully at the cover when I bought it lol. I guess being unluckly in that sense i got lucky anyway