A few years later my mom finally let us get one with buffer underrun protection (and some multiplier on the write speed) so I could make mix CDs with music off Napster for my girlfriend and life was good.
She still listens to it when working.
By then, it was all pretty well sorted despite that burner having no underrun protection.
The IBM Ultrastar 9ES drives kept it fed very well on that otherwise quite slow Slackware box.
Burn a CD, compile a kernel, and browse the web while watching some VCD rip of a music video in one corner of the screen? No problem.
FWIW, I haven't been to the Phoenix Microcenter yet, mostly in that I'm afraid of how much I might otherwise spend there.
The funny thing is that it has all the same terrible qualities as Fry's ... huge lines, the checkout pathway weaves like a tower defense setup through tunnels full of all kinds of chinesium garbage, candy, bawls energy, ESD wrist straps, cheap flash drives, back massagers, etc. The employees usually have autism with terrible social skills, love to make small talk, etc. The line will be 30 people deep and you will have some dude who has already checked out and completed his purchase (wearing And1 basketball shorts and dress socks/shoes) talking to the sales person about warhammer paint preferences. Every time I am in there I pull the floor manager aside and say, why the fuck do you guys do such a terrible job with the checkout process?
So basically one or two visits to microcenter and you will never want to go there again until you REALLY need to go there.
They only had one in Illinois, about seven miles or so from Micro Center, and it was one of the earliest to fold.
Once upon a time, I had brick-and-mortar Tiger Direct, Micro Center, and Fry's stores all within an hour's drive. Micro Center is the last one standing.