> In the "its a slot load drive" therefore "it will likely ruin my CD's" way. 
> Sorry but thats a crock of s**t!
> 
> If you can ruin a CD in a slot load drive you aren't using it properly.
> 
> All the slot load drives I have ever seen you can load and eject the CD with 
> one of your fingers in the hole, so no finger prints.  You can also grab it 
> by the edges which also dont leave any fingerprints.

I've yet to see a slot-load drive that ejects the disk far enough to get 
at the hole in the center. So the only way to pull it out is to grab it 
by the edge (hopefully beyond the edge of the data track...)

> The servo arm that holds the CD is covered in rubber so doesn't scratch 
> discs.

Sometimes the servo fails to detect that you're inserting a disk, and 
you have to force it a little before it wakes up and starts the loading 
process. Similarly, sometimes you have to yank the disk pretty hard 
before you can remove it. If the drive lets go suddenly and the disk 
touches the sides of the slot, instant scratches.

Admittedly, it's not as bad as tying the CDs to the back of your car and 
taking a trip down the motorway. But I dislike having *any* scratches on 
my CDs which I've paid for.

> I've also 
> never heard of a drive where you have to bend the disc to load, that sounds 
> broken.

Well, poorly designed or manufactured at the very minimum.

> One thing that slot load drives dont let you do that tray drives do is let 
> the draw jam the cd between it and the front panel if the CD isn't placed in 
> the center correctly.  When this happens, you get bad scratches on the disc. 
> This has only ever happened to me with older IDE type drives where software 
> has closed the tray while I was loading a disc.  PITA!

This is the only disadvantage of tray load. The disk must be sitting in 
the tray properly before you close the tray. If the tray suddenly 
decides to close of its own accord, you'll usually have a problem. But 
on any sensible tray-load drive, the tray doesn't close until you press 
the button. I very rarely have problems with it.

(Arguably the best ones are laptop drives, where the tray isn't even 
motorised, and you have to clip the CD onto the spindle. You can readily 
verify when it's clipped in place, and you can't possibly close the tray 
by mistake...)

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