anyone know of a good USB DVD writer that works well with ubuntu?

[Jim March]

First step, I would try the latest Jaunty alpha and see if that fixes
it.  If it does, just wait a bit for that.  Right now Jaunty is
sucking if you have an Intel video card but it looks to be a fixable
issue.

Worst case, a replacement DVD drive for a laptop is about $40.  To me,
paying $40 in hardware to be able to NOT run Windows would be a small
price to pay.

Jim