Just stumbled on this thread as I've just bought 2x DVD±RW (±R DL) DVD burners - should arrive any day now - and I'm looking ahead.
Good to hear that they should work ok on Win98Lite/ Nero. One is a Toshiba SD-R5372 external (Freecom USB2), the other is an LG GSA-H10N with DVD-RAM capability - looking forward to trying that.
Couple of points - one reason to use USB-burners is simply a case of limited space. My workaday machines are Dell GX110's (whisper quiet) in low profile cases - easy enough to piggy-back 2 x 250Gb HDD's on the floor of each case, but there's only room for 1 x CD drive.
A second point is that no-one has yet mentioned the 2Gb filesize limit of Win98. Not normally a problem, but could well be if you ever wanted to burn DVD videos. (personally, I don't)
Lastly - to those whose burners have started to play up after a couple of hundred burns, or after a year or two - it might be worth opening-up the drive and giving the laser lens a wipe-over with a cotton-bud soaked in alcohol. There's certainly nothing to lose.
This post has been edited by SAE140: 30 October 2010 - 04:17 AM