Responding to joemike first, I've never had to deal with a stuck disc in either a slot or tray-loader, but it just seems "logical" that the drive with fewer moving parts will be the less likely of the two to suffer mechanical failure.
Tray loaders do not have fewer moving parts it is just that the moving parts are all inside the drive and not visible to the user. I have seen too many slot loaders with jammed discs inside to be completely comfortable with them. (I once saw a slot loader that somehow managed to load a disc even though there was another disc already in the drive. Not unsurprisingly the second disc jammed the drive completely and ended up destroying both discs.
Admittedly the new slot loaders are better than they used to be jams still occur. On the other hand although I have both slot and tray loading optical drives attached to my Mac mini, I honestly do not remember the last time I used either one, so any argument over slot loaders
vs. tray loaders seems moot.
