From BenQ's site: http://www.benq.com/press/News.cfm?id=1271&cat=0

TAIPEI, TAIWAN, 10 April 2006 - Lite-On IT and BenQ today announced that they have formed a strategic alliance that will bring together two of the industry's leading players and enhance the overall competitiveness of Taiwan's storage sector. The transaction is expected to increase Lite-On IT's global market share to 27%, making it the world's No. 2 optical disk drive (ODD) maker.


I love my BenQ's so I'm not sure I like this...

I like my Lite-Ons so I'm feeling the same. I wonder what sort of effect this will have on drive quality.

A mix of both would make a killer drive

BenQ seemed to have the burning quality superiority with their latest drives (low error rates and jitter), so this is definitely a good thing for Lite-On...a questionable thing for BenQ and the rest of us when it comes to quality drives.

Lite-On's drives are rather nice. Don't know about their newer ones.

Based on my very limited DAE tests (since I do not have the funds to buy all the possible drives) Lite-on seemed to have better error correction. The BENQ did not have reliable C2 either. I cannot remember the exact result, but I got rid of the BENQ. They were CD-RW-s. It was not outstandingly bad though.

Mind you these features change quite rapidly. Maybe I just had a wrong model.