By the time your next one bites the dust, Blu-Ray recorders will be hitting the sub £100 mark.
I been watching those lately, and it's somewhat scary how much the price has come down in the last year, tempted to pick me up a decent brand in the next couple years if it getst o the CDN$150 mark.
(shame that it'd be primarily for backup storage since I doubt any of my buds would have a BluRay drive aside from a PS3, and PC games won't be using them {or HD-DVD, whichever wins the war} for a long-friggen time)
Anyhow, regarding burners, all my LG drives (2x CD-RWs, 1x DVD±RW) still work flawlessly here a couple years later, but then again, I also don't make heavy burn-usage of them, which kills the laser-diode faster I assume?