I have the Lite-On 40x, and it's been great. Burns a full 80 minute CD in about 3:20. I haven't noticed any real wait for the disc to spin up for reading either.
EDIT: I noticed that you're not looking at the 40x drive, but the 24x drive...the way you wrote the speeds is odd...usually you write the CD-R write speed / CD-RW write speed / Read speed....I have the 40x/12x/48x...not the 24x/10x/40x. But, the drives are similar to my knowledge, so the good points still stick.
Jman