Least Expensive Slim BD Solution You Can Get
Works well in my custom built HTPC with a slim bay. Haven't tried writing, but that's not what an HTPC is supposed to do anyway. Plays BD through PowerDVD 9/MCE but the interface is a little clunky with that Frankenstein combo. I don't think it's the drive's fault though.

Problematic but resolvable
I got one of these at a different vendor but thought I'd share my experiences here. I got this with the intent of installing it in a slim SATA DVD enclosure to use as a portable USB2 BD player.

From the very start I had trouble getting it to even recognize BD movies. It has no problem with DVD's and CD's and shows up in My Computer as BD-ROM. I gave up for while but an upcoming trip prompted me to figure this thing out. I finally found a discussion somewhere where it was suggested the lens be thoroughly cleaned with alcohol. After a couple of gentle but increasingly vigorous scrubs, to my amazement, it worked.

I played about 5 or six movies on 3 different computers without issue. Then suddenly playback began stuttering. I plugged it into the laptop where it worked the first time and, now, once again, it wouldn't even recognize BD disk's. I did a little more research and dug up a comment regarding a Sony slim BD player in which it was suggested the drive needs room to flex and that by loosening the screws holding it in place would helped it. I decided to disassemble my enclosure and plug it into the chip-set directly. Yahoo, it works again. Actually, I believe I just need to trim or file on the opening to allow for the drawer/sliding mechanism to operate more freely.

There is a lot of discussion about updating firmware and installing UDF drivers (especially for XP), but my feeling is it's mostly mechanical. Optics need to be as clean as possible and disk needs to spin as freely as possible.

Defective drive.
Mine was defective, so I returned it and got a full refund. All's well that ends well. The blu-ray feature initially worked, but the drive was unable to write CD-R's and had other problems.