What makes this diode so attractive to use though?
It seems to have specs comparable (to, or under that of) pretty common cd writers all over the place.
Also it would be fairly dangerous as 780 nm is barely visible, you probably will never get a visible beam out of it, though you could see the dot as fairly dim red point. Condering the power level you'll not be using this for things like cutting/engraving etc, so what is the point?