Yeah, from hunting down a few things on the apple/support forums I've been seeing just how much they're junk. I was looking at an external superdrive except that I found out it works only with the macbook air. I am just really frustrated that i'm even having this issue, I paid nearly twice as much as I could've w/a windows laptop (which would've immediately had linux installed on it) and now i'm getting a dysfuntional superdrive. I'm going to swing by the apple store on monday to get them to replace/repair this as i'm still under warranty. Thanks for the useful answer