Vista/XP can't burn a single CD/DVD without infuriating you

There was a feature first introduced in XP for burning CDs. In Xp the service was called something like ATAPI burning or whatever. Couldn't burn DVDs. In Vista the same software could burn DVDs. I couldn't find the service name. I may have missed it somehow.

So this software was a nice feature - simple, fairly stable.

But it's so darn slow and requires twice as much space as the burned data. Here's why:

First you copy the files on the CD/DVD with Windows Explorer. This copies the files in a cache of some kind. Trying to burn 4.5 GB requires 4-5 minutes of copying - and the machine is unusable  - copying utilizes the HDD. If you do something else it could take up to 20 min.

Then to burn them, the wizard should be started - this again copies the files to another cache I guess. Again 5 to 20 minutes.

This means 9 GB of space needed + the actual 4.5 GB. And a lot of time.

Vista/XP you messed up a good idea again. Vista/XP you suck.

As far as I can remember Nero was a lot faster, no cache needed, or at least no that much. Is Nero still good? Is there a light version of it?