shamus,
how does the verify function show much about the burn?
I have gotten my nec 3550 to work well as a secondary scanner,
of course I prefer my benq 1650, you can't make any judgement on a burn and weigh in the pie totals when scanning with the nec as it reports
pie in an exaggerated manner. The drives are very inconsistent from one to another, you have to run scans at 4x, 8x and 12x and find the best speed for each individual drive. The only meaningful thing I got from his graph was the pif total of 265 which seems low, a transfer rate graph would be just as informative, maybe more so.(verify with graph)
the best thing would be to flash that drive to dee's 1Y6 and use bitsetting for dvd+r media for compatibility
http://liggydee.cdfreaks.com/page/3550/