[andrewas]

Id say to junk the CDROM. DVDROM and CD-R may be more expensive (for IDE models the difference is not large though), but only the CD-R is likely to suffer from heavy use. The DVDROM has a similar lens assembly to a CDROM so it can be cleaned easily, which will remove almost all glitches until the laser dies or something mechanical breaks.

The CD-R is more delicate and cant be cleaned as easily, so only use it for burning CDs.

I myself only have a CD-R and havent run into any problems with it. I use No-Cd cracks and rip music to MP3 as much as possible, but even so it sees some heavy use.