I was leaning towards the HP DVD200I drive but I am a newbie at this. Any recommendations are welcome. Thanks.

I'm going to move this to the Consumer's Opinion fourm for you. If you could provide us with your needs, we could help you better in making a decision.

I presume it is a DVD drive you are after? :)
The Lite-on 163 has recieved good reviews, reads almost everything, works good as a cdrom as well, and is cheap.
Anyway, it could be nice with a little more info? What do you want to do with your drive? If you just want to watch DVDs, any drive will do. But, if you want to use it as a cdrom as well, not all DVD drives are very fast at that.