This is for my grandson for Christmas. He has a new computer (Dell) with Win XP Home installed, so obviously has USB, etc. Can anyone recommend an external Cd-ROM burner? I've just started looking around. Another question might be if the USB interface is best to sue for one of these, or if not, then what should I be looking for?Thanks for any help. This is primarily for burning music CD's.Bruce.

Well, does it have USB 2.0(or its 1.1)? If no most of External CDRWs WILL still work, but you will get only 4x, 6x or soeven its advertised speed is 24x because that speed is when useing USB 2.0Also looking at price/perfomance ratio, extrenral CDRWs are really costly and still slow.There are internal CDRWs that are 48x while if I remember correctly the fastest external is 24x, and yet the price is about twice.I have 32x internal that I got for $30 (80-50 rebate) and Im extremely happy.Unless there are reason such as to be able to use it on different computers, then get him an internal one.