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CD-ROM and CD-RW
There's not that much difference in CD-ROM drives, so it's ok to get whatever you find for a good price. A good CD-ROM reference is CDSpeed2000. For example, their CD-ROM Data Speed chart shows the actual measured speed for numerous CD-ROM drives, and their CD-ROM FAQ Page is helpful. Oftentimes a CD-ROM drive is sold under another name, so it may not be immediately obvious what it is you're really buying. For example, a Digital Research CD-ROM I purchased was actually an Afreey CD-ROM drive.
I prefer to use a CD-RW drive instead of a CD-ROM drive. When prices were higher, it made sense to have both and use the the less expensive CD-ROM most of the time and only use the more expensive CD-RW to create CD's. At today's price levels for optical drives, you could use this same logic to have both a CD-RW drive and a DVD RW drive, using the less expensive CD-RW drive whenever possible and using the more expensive DVD RW drive for DVD's. On ther other hand, with the price of DVD RW drives at today's levels, you might want to reduce the heat and power burden on the computer and go with just a DVD RW drive. In fact, My Super PC has only one optical drive, a DVD RW.
The CD-RW drives I like are made by Lite-On, like this Lite-On 40x/12x/48x. The speeds refer to the transfer rate of data. A speed of "1x" corresponds to 150 kilobytes of data per second. The three numbers in the speed rating correspond to the speed of writing CD-R discs, writing CD-RW discs, and reading CDs respectively.
My favorite source of information on CD-RW drives is CD-RW CD-ROM Labs. I especially like their CD-ROM and CD-RW Reviews page since nearly everything ever made has been reviewed and is listed in easy to find order. Also, each review is very consistent which makes it easy to compare the reviews of different CD-ROM or CD-RW drives. For CD-RW drives, the reviews also cover the installation, use and features of the packaged software to burn CD's.
It's fairly common to use CD-R discs as the physical media of choice rather than CD-RW discs, even though it means it can only be used once. This is because CD-R discs are substantially cheaper than CD-RW discs and there's not that much need to write over it again.
It's unlikely CD-ROM and CD-RW speeds will exceed 56x without some advancement in the technology of either the media or the drive. The structural integrity of today's media cannot hold up at such speeds in today's drives. And it's unlikely there will be advances in the technology unless consumers demand it, which doesn't seem very likely, so there you are.
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