i know that their is a price difference. what about over all performance? i was thinking about a usb external cdrw. i saw that tiger direct had a sony 24x10x40 for about $80 and its usb 2.0
will the usb slow it down any?

Not really significantly no, although I do prefer the internal ones because they are in the xase and not cluttering up your space outside of your PC.

The speed difference isn't magnificent really, you may aswell go for the IDE one though, but both do the same job at the end of the day.

Firewires ones are the best!



Pid

well i think i want an external cause i might get a laptop for college and i'll just take that with me instead of having to pay more money for a burner in my laptop.

Firewire and USB2 are both pretty hot.

Read this http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0004/26.usb.shtml