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Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Peripherals

TUAW Review: Dymo DiscPainter

by Steven Sande (RSS feed) on Jun 29th, 2008

Dymo DiscPainterI have a mountain of CDs and DVDs in my office. Some of them are in sleeves, others are stacked on spindles. For the most part, my disc labeling consists of grabbing a Sharpie ultra-fine-point marker and scrawling something right on the top of the disc. I've tried sticky labels before, but stopped after I had a few CDs that wouldn't come out of my iMac's SuperDrive slot.

Dymo, the labeling company, is now shipping the DiscPainter. It's a single-duty printer designed for one thing; printing directly onto inkjet-printable CD and DVD media.

Size, Installation, and Setup

The first thing that hit me when I opened the DiscPainter box was how big it is. Given that it is a single-tasker, it takes up a lot of room on a desktop (roughly 5.75" x 10"). For those with limited space available, this may be a reason not to buy the DiscPainter.

Following the included Quick Start Guide (yes, I RTFM), I removed the usual tape and plastic cruft encasing the DiscPainter, popped in the single ink cartridge, and connected the power cable. The initial user experience is excellent.

Read on for the full review

Tags: cd, discpainter, dvd, dymo, media, review, tweet-this

Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Peripherals

TUAW Review: Dymo DiscPainter Part 2

by Steven Sande (RSS feed) on Jun 29th, 2008

Size, Installation, and Setup (continued)

The DiscPainter comes with a Mac OS X / Windows installation CD that installs drivers and Discus for Dymo, an application that helps you to the design the disc image. After plugging in the USB cable and restarting your Mac, the instructions take you through making your first disc.

Software

I was underwhelmed by the Discus for Dymo software, which despite a 2007 copyright date appears to have been written while Mac OS X 10.2 was still all the rage. It has a cheesy, Aqua-like interface (see below) that looks very unprofessional and is obviously a port done by Windows programmers. My first thought was that I needed to update the software. No, version 1.1.1 IS the latest version.



Discus for Dymo does its job, but is uses many Mac OS X features incorrectly. For example, I wanted to use a picture from my iPhoto Library as a backdrop on a CD so I clicked on the Photo button expecting the standard Apple media browser to appear immediately. Instead, I had to navigate to my Photos folder before the media browser appeared.



Tags: cd, discpainter, dvd, dymo, media, review

Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Peripherals

TUAW Review: Dymo DiscPainter Part 3

by Steven Sande (RSS feed) on Jun 29th, 2008

Software (continued)

Likewise, trying to pick the "TUAW Green" for the text on the label, I thoroughly expected to see the standard Apple color picker so I could use the little magnifier tool to go for the green. No such luck. I finally figured out that I could option-click one of the custom colors to make the color picker appear (see below).

The craptastic Discus for Dymo text color picker


Fortunately, other CD/DVD labeling packages support the DiscPainter. I highly recommend trashing Discus for Dymo and purchasing BeLight's Disc Cover ($34.95). If you can get Avery's free Design Pro software to work with the DiscPainter, please leave a comment and let the rest of us know how to do it.

Hardware and Printing

Clicking the Print button in Discus brought up the standard Mac OS X print dialog with the DiscPainter pre-selected. I used all of the defaults and then watched as the blank CD was pulled into the tall part of the printer and slowly started inching out. It's cool to watch the printing, which occurs from the hub of the CD outwards. The colors matched those chosen in the software very closely, and the resolution was very nice (600 dpi). It took about two minutes for the printing to complete.

A DiscPainter with a slot-loader would make the footprint of the printer half the size of the current DiscPainter. One other gripe -- there's no power button to turn the printer off. You need to unplug it to totally power down.


Tags: cd, discpainter, dvd, dymo, media, review

Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Peripherals

TUAW Review: Dymo DiscPainter Part 4

by Steven Sande (RSS feed) on Jun 29th, 2008

Conclusion

Reviewer Rating: 3 out of 5 possible

Should you buy one? If you need to do a lot of CD/DVD labeling and money isn't an object, yes. However, if you need a new printer anyway, the HP Photosmart C5280 all-in-one gives you a disc and paper printer, copier, scanner, and more, all in one box that costs less than half the price of the DiscPainter. You can also buy HP LightScribe external drives for much less, but the media is quite expensive.

If you DO buy one, remember to include the cost of BeLight Disc Cover to replace the Discus for Dymo software.

Pros
  • Fast high-resolution printing
  • Very quiet
  • Does the job it is designed for, despite software shortcomings
  • Does excellent job of printing directly on CD/DVD media
Cons
  • Software isn't very Mac-like
  • Printer footprint larger than it needs to be
  • No power switch, can't turn it fully off without unplugging
  • Very Expensive ($279.95 MSRP, about $250 online)
Be sure to check out the Gallery below for more pictures of the Dymo DiscPainter.

Gallery: DiscPainter

DiscPainter and BoxCloseup of Dymo DiscPainterOpen Disc DoorInk Cartridge BinGetting Sucked In

Tags: cd, discpainter, dvd, dymo, media, review

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