There are a few things you should never do, most of which involve committing to marriage at midnight after a night of drinking in a Las Vegas wedding chapel, or spitting into the wind, or tugging on Superman’s cape.

For digital folks, top of the list is to never, ever, ever use labels on your CDs or DVDs. There have been low-cost printer solutions that print an image directly on the surface of inkjet printable discs, but for the most part they have been a bit kludgy in operation - great for occasional printing, but not a great solution if you have to print a bunch at a time. On the high end are combination printer-burners from folks like Primera, which are great for batch burning and printing, but range in the $1500 and up range.

Enter DYMO, which just brought out the DYMO DiscPainter, a dedicated disc printer. It features very high-resolution printing, and can print closer into the spindle area than the tray assemblies used in normal desktop printers. Depending upon the quality, the time to print is between 30 seconds and 3 minutes per disc. It’s a brand new product, so we haven’t had time to test its long-term reliability, but judging from other DYMO products we have used of late, we have no reason to doubt the build quality. As of the time of this review, the software isn’t yet Leopard-compatible, but they promise a rev in the near future. If you need high quality printing on the face of your optical media, the DYMO DiscPainter is a solid choice, fast, high quality, and simple to use.

While we are discussing DYMO, we should mention their DYMO Desktop Mailing Solutions, a unique combination label printer and U.S. Post Office approved USB scale. Load up some postage from the USPS, place an envelope or parcel on the scale, and you can print postage on the spot! The printer can accommodate two different types of labels at once, and can print from your favorite database or spreadsheet application. Most of the time we find dual-purpose items a compromise on at least one of the functions, but with this unit, it is that rare triple purpose device that works splendidly.

Harris Fogel, Posted 12/20/2007

For more information on the DYMO DiscPainter: www.dymo.com

For more information on the DYMO Desktop Mailing Solutions: www.dymo.com