I found it interesting in the PC World Top 10, there were NO LiteOns
Actually several are likely Lite-Ons. I think they are the largest burner manufacturer in the world now and a large number of rebadged burners are Liteon. If you look at your Liteon DVD and burner you will probably notice Lite-On is on the front of the drive as a sticker rather than painted on, and often doesnt have a Liteon label at all. I think that is an inventory thing so they can easily put someone elses name on it.
Their #1 rated TDK is almost certainly a Liteon. TDK makes their own unique blue faceplates, but the back is exactly the same as the Liteon right down to the blue jumper. TDK doesnt make their own burners but do write their own firmware and do a good job of keeping it up to date. They have rebadged Plextor and Sanyo burners in the past.
Memorex, CenDyne and Pacific Digital dont make their own and are often rebadged Liteons. Sony hasnt made their own burners for a while now but I dont know who makes them.
PC World isnt the place to go for burner reviews. Both of these sites do comprehensive multi-page tests and reviews:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Hardware/All.asp and
http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/
Many rebadged burners carry a LTR designation on the back. This means that Liteon made it. There is a little utility available that allows you to flash rebadged Liteons with Liteon firmware. Better to just get a Liteon in the first place.
hmmm... interesting- slipe & kramnnim - 2 votes- Nero
Actually I prefer the Prassi engine. I use CloneCD for copy protected CDs, Feurio for audio and Ghost for images. I just want a reliable engine for my mastering software without all the bells and whistles. Prassi claims to more completely maintain the original structure of whatever you are writing, and I have found that to be true. I had hundreds of files to write to CD and there were a few that some clown thought it would be neat to use his last name as the file extension. Nero, EZCD and CDRWin all refused to write the files due to unknown file types. The Prassi just wrote it. The copy utility is equally robust with Fireburner being the only other one as good. Prassi will copy Playstation 1 games on the fly at full speed. None of the other mastering software will do that you have to use something like CloneCD which takes much longer.
Unfortunately they havent updated the Prassi for most newer burners since Veritas bought them. Click n Burn seems to be exactly the same as the old Prassi Primo CD Plus. Record Now also uses the robust Prassi engine. If I get a new burner I will likely buy Record Now.
If I could have only one piece of burner software on my computer it would be Nero though. The Bs Recorder Gold review from CDRLabs I linked above says this:
Whether or not you are aware of it, Ahead Software's Nero Burning Rom is the reigning king of software burning suites. It is by far the standard to which all other programs are compared. Many of us will not even bother with the programs bundled by our drive manufactures and install Nero instead. That says a lot right there, as it's the standard we must compare all other burning suites to.
All of the other sites that do comprehensive burner tests and really know their stuff also use Nero. The person Im familiar with who is the most knowledgeable about burner software now uses Nero. He was a beta tester for EZCD for years and wont even consider using it now. Many of the garus also like WinOnCD, but it is available only outside the US.
EZCD got a really bad name with a lot of people when even their XP patch wouldnt get EZCD5 working properly on XP. They downloaded Nero and it worked so they say EZCD as crappy software. EZCD has all of that sorted out now. The EZCD Platinum package has lots of nice bells and whistles and the program is competent. The packet writing component (DirectCD) is far and away the best packet writing program that comes with standard software. I dont use packet writing and would never trust a packet written RW as my only source for anything important, but some people put it to good use.