I have the pioneer 108 and im totally happy with it...the only coasters ive burnt were with the first set of media i had that came with the drive and that was because they were crappy discs, if i put any more than 4 gigs on them i seemed to have trouble

i also just bought some 8x discs (because they had an instant rebate...didnt even realize they were 8x at the time, and they are good quality discs) and my recent burns have been at 12x...havent upgraded the firmware at all from what it came with.

-Darth Simon