I needed a portable CD-ReWriter. Why did I need a portable one? Well, for one, it's very nice not to have my CD-RW tied to any particular system (so I can use it on a laptop, desktop, work computer, whatever). For another, my desktop (at the time) had some upgrade issues which prevented me from placing a new CD-RW into it. Not to mention the fact that I was working out-of-state at Intel at the time, and only had my laptop with me.

Of course, I also use Linux. So I needed something that would be completely compatible with it. Luckily, most things these days are compatible with it, so it came down to which CD-RW drive offered me the most features for the best price.

Micro-Solution's BackPack cd-rewriter fit my needs perfectly. If you are using the 2.2 kernel series, then you will need to download the drivers from here. If you are using anything recent (anything since 2.4.4) the drivers are now included in your kernel (provided that whomever compiled your kernel included them ;-) All you need to do (typically) is do a 'modprobe pg' and it'll be ready to go (or, have it set up in your boot process, as many distros [such as Red Hat] automatically do).