Sorry, Ed, I've had an HP for over three years with no problems and NO bad burns. Plugged it into my computer, turned it on and it worked from day one.
I just bought a Plextor 32 X 8 X 4 this week ($146.00 from buy.com) because my son "borrowed" the HP and I figured I'll never see it again. I haven't had enough time to do any burns yet, BUT... when I installed it and booted up I had an immediate conflict. Turns out my CD-ROM was set to Master and so was the Plextor. No big deal, I just had to set one of them to Slave and things were fine. Next, I opened Wavelab 3.0 and the program wouldn't recognize the new burner (even though Windows and Adaptec see it fine). I'm still working on trying to fix that one (downloaded some new drivers from Steinberg, but haven't loaded them yet).
I suspect I'll get things straightened out and the Plextor will be fine; however, the bottom line is in 2 days I've had more problems with the Plextor than I had with the HP in three years.