Umm what forum should this go in?
Peripherals, perhaps?
On topic, I would personally choose the DVD Writer for the PC. I too feel it's more versatile and there are certain things you can tweak in the writing software which you cannot do with the stand-alone players.
I would wait until the end of this year before purchasing one. I personally feel it's a bit too early to take the plunge and spend hundreds of dollars on a writing speed that will probably go up jurastically, as did CD-RW drives. It wasn't long after 4x/8x drives were released when 10x and above came out.
My $0.02