Casio CW-50 CD Title Printer

I haven't used this machine yet. But I have bad handwritten and anything is better than that. I got my at staples (cost $80) with a $20 mail in rebate, plus I had a business reward $30 discount rebate. So for $30 its much better than the avery labels that cost $10 and up.

I'm written to let you know that you can buy the red, green, blue, silver, black, 3 pack of black ribbon at J & R. Single pack cost $6.99 plus tax and 3 pack cost $19.99.

I've seen reviews where people rightfully claim that the unit wastes ribbon. It does. If you have no text/graphics on the right side of your cd the unit does in fact run the ribbon even though there is nothing to print. This could be corrected by a software upgrade, I'll bet. I have nothing but empirical evidence to work with, but the unit seems to "reload" (and waste even more ribbon) if you close the print tray completely between discs. If one leaves the tray open after printing it appears that you get much more usage out of the ribbon. (I.E. the only wasted space is whatever portion on the right side of the disc that has no text/graphics.) From looking at used ribbons, it seems that if you do not close the tray, there is less wasted ribbon than if you close it after printing. (perhaps someone else can verify) I use this printer a lot on silver blank discs; it still works out to be less than paper labels both in cost and annoyance, plus the black text with simple graphics is still quite evident today as a professional standard on commerical cd's. And as someone pointed out, if you can do color separations, you could print RGB full color if you were so inclined. (I wouldn't try this on the cw 50, go for the one that automatically rotates the disc for printing, cw 100). but for 50 bucks if you can find the ribbons for approx. 7.00, it's a bargain.

I had it for a week ($50 after rebate at J&R)
Printed about 30 disc so far.
You will not get good result if the disc have logos on the
part you plan to print.
The Memorex I use have lines where you
suppose to use your marker.
I try to line up the text I print with the CW-50 so
it does not print on these faint lines.

I use NINA or MV Boli Font with Bold at as big size as possible.
You can type in any number and not just the 48 or 72 points
It comes out pretty good, the low 200dpi does show up a little.

The 8x TDK DVDRs are just perfect for this printer.

The printer performs great. I have owned my printer for a few years now, and have printed on thousands of discs.

Many people, myself included, have complained of the waste of printer ribbon. I have discovered that if you install the lastest driver software from Casio, (CWup303W as of this review), you can get a few more prints out of your ribbon. Simply open the printer software, click the setup icon (the little wrench icon) and make certain the box is checked for: Manually open disc tray before printing.

It prints nicely assuming your CD/DVD has a smooth surface. It is relatively quiet and the text won't flake off...

However, the software is lame. It's hard to make anything look good...no pre-installed templates, no real way to create a nice template in Photoshop or the like and import it.

For a basic print job, not a bad CD printer.