Fact is though the DVD burners do not cost much more, can probably find good DVD burners now for around $50 though they may be normal single layer burners.
The 8x NEC I have now is selling for $60 plus $0.99 shipping at newegg, and I am sure other brands might even cost less though I haven't looked.
The fact is there is really no reason other than price to NOT buy a DVD burner over a CD burner. You can burn cds pretty fast, mine does 32x and I think others may be even faster (12X lite-on DVD burns Cds at 48x). I have 52x cd burners also, bought those when DVD burners were way over $100 so I wouldn't wear out a expensive DVD burner doing a job of a $45 cd burner. But I wouldn't get one now. Normally I don't see that much difference in cd burning speed anyway. Maybe if I were mass producing disks it would add up, but doing one or two disks at a time it's just not that big a difference. I spend more time deciding what to burn than actually burning the cd anyway.
Like mentioned by another, it's pretty much an all in one drive that does everything. Play Cd's DVD's or record them. The DVD R disks don't take any longer to burn really when comparing the same amount of data.
I can burn a 4.7 gig DVD in about 8 minutes or less on one disk, how long does it take to burn 4.7gigs onto how many CDs?? Of course I could burn just 700mb to a dvd disk in far less time than that, but then I would just burn a cd instead. Burning time is directly related to the amount of data being burned. More data more time, less data less time, so a full DVD is what about 7 times the data of a CD, so it should take about 7 times as long to be equal.
You can back up your important files (and folders full of files) to DVD up to about 4.3 gigs.
You can store MASSIVE amounts of mp3's on DVD and play them on your DVD player and surround sound system at your TV. You can do the same with Cds too, just less per disk.
Basically you can do everything that CD's do, but in far larger sizes though.
I found DVDs are also great for organizing CD backups! I can create an ISO file backup of a music or data cd, make a folder for that type of disk, and put many ISO backups onto one dvd. Then if I need to replace a broke or scratched disk the Iso is easy to find and ready to go. No need to go searching for the original disk to make another backup directly from it. I put the originals away safe an sound, I normally only use those once and that is to make the first backup! Now that I bought a pickup truck that has a cd player those backups are more important than ever. I am sure I will be trashing many disks soon
As for price of disks themselves, basically DVDs are cheaper! It of course depends what you are doing with your disks. DVD r disks (for good ones) are just a little more than good CDs, but one DVD costs far less than the 5 or 6 CDs you need for the same capacity. So if your doing mostly data, or archiving your Mp3s etc.. and have 4 gigs you want to back up, then one DVD R costs less than 4gigs of cds.
Prices have come down alot since I last bought disks, but my printable DVD's cost about twice what my printable CDs cost me, and they hold far more than twice the data. So in all reality they actually cost less when I start doing things like 3-4 gig folder backups or cd Iso backups. Mostly I burn movie type DVDs onto the printables and use regular non-printable disks for backups because they cost even less. But as prices have fallen now I will probably just use printables for everything rather I print them or not.
You can still write on a printable same as a non-printable, they're just prettier when printed and look more professional. Even though I am not selling my data backups, they might as well look nice when geusts see them laying all over the house
Of course you can get cheaper DVD R disks than I bought and Cheaper CDs too. So far I have not found many free after rebate deals for DVD disks, but have gotten a few for CDs. That's about the only time data for data the Cds where actually cheaper though.
It seems about 80% of the people I know or talk to think MOVIE as soon as you mention DVDs or Burners. They have so many more uses than just copying movies!! But just as VHS brings thoughts of a TV movie so do DVDs. Just not true!
And as for the VHS, Well long before CD burners were ever popular I was recording my own music mix onto PC editing and recording back to stereo VHS and Beta tapes for 4-6 hours of continous music the way I wanted it not the way the recording companies stuck it on a cassette or CD! Take out the trash filler songs, add some echo and bass on the PC to the good songs and record back to VHS or Beta tapes. Pop in a VHS tape and party hardy, never having to swap tapes or flip them over ect...
If anyone tries the VHS trick, it works well but be sure to add a video signal, it needs that for speed control when playing the tape. Found that out the hard way years ago, it can be snow or a blank screen just as long as something is recorded.
Anyway, some people just have no use for DVDs at all and no need to spend the extra $20-$30, but then many people just don't think about all the other uses (other than movies), like data backups and such whereas you quickly save the extra money you pay for a burner by using far less disks in the long run. For permanant data storage, where else you gonna find a 4.3 gig hard drive for 50 cents?? Kinda one way to look at it. Though you can get cheaper or more expensive disks if you wanted.
You can also use RW disks though I never do anymore. One of the things I find DVD R handy for is backing up all the Demo programs I have downloaded and stuff I have registerd too! Write once disks (CDs or DVDs) are a pain sometimes that I can not erase some files like when I get new versions of programs but then again they're nice because I have a permant copy of the older program if I need it latter. With all the large video programs I have downloaded like DVD-lab it's nice to have them around to try again latter if I want without downloading them again, and I don't waist alot of hard drive space keeping the stuff. DVD-Lab looked interesting, but the trial expired before I got to use it. Installed it, looked it over once, got busy and the trial expired before I really could see what it did. Some day I may try it again on another system. I probably have a full DVD R of just video trailware programs I am saving this way, 4 gigs for 50 cents. Then I have other programs the same way, website building, music editing, etc..
When you look at it that way, where else can you get 80 gigs storage for about $10, and an 80 gig drive is about $65 now at newegg.
Anyway I am sure alot of people have no reason to have a DVD burner and it's no big deal but I thought I'd mention some things many people don't think about too.