Wanna' See My Etchings???
by Gary Woods

Labeling CDs has always been a pain and I've never really been happy with the results. I've used the Stomper to create and paste labels on my CDs and the results are good, but I always worry about the glue from the label either messing up the CD or coming off when the CD is in the drive and messing up my drive.

That said, there's a new product to create labels on your CDs from BenQ that I think looks way cool. It's the BenQ DW1625 DVD rewriter and incorporates a new type of labeling technology. The process is called LightScribe Direct Disk Labeling and uses an optical drive's laser pickup to etch text and graphics onto the surface of specially coated media.

Announced last January by Hewlett-Packard, LightScribe has already been integrated into the internal drives built by HP desktop and notebook computers. Burning a label is simple as inserting a disc into the drive upside-down, to expose the coated surface to the drive's laser. The image isn't very dark but otherwise the quality is superb.

The current implementation supports only monochromatic output and doesn't produce true blacks. The labeling process takes about 20 to 25 minutes at the highest quality setting to etch four lines of text with a few small graphics, and HP acknowledges that LightScribe labels will fade in time.

The DW1625 lists for $119 and the disks are about $13.90 for a 10 pack.

If you have any suggestions or questions for me please drop me a note at garyandlaury@santabarbaraproperties.com or see my column on the Internet at http://www.santabarbaraproperties.com or call me at (805) 729-0910