Not as yet but it certainly seems very attractive, printing DVDs is a PIA. Anything that makes that easier gets my vote.

Bob.

Your right, it looks interesting and the software seems very extensive. You won't have any problem keeping discs on center and you can do all kinds of fancy picture collages and patterns. I guess somebody needs to flogg this thing out. It looks to be a bit faster than what we have available now.
JJK

Problem for me would be the price - The DYMO site has it for $280. That's more than I paid for my Epson R380.

Briefly discussed last month towards the end of this thread.

>>...HP Photosmart C5280...

1.) Just out of curiousity, how is this on ink? Anything remotely akin to Epson (R200)?
2.) Does it use a special tray for disk printing?
3.) Good on scanning?
4.) Does it print on regular inkjet printable discs?

I ask because my scanner died and my Epson R200 is getting some miles on it.

When I went to the store, all I could find is these all-in-one devices. I know, at least a few years ago, they seemed to pretty much be the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none kind of setups.

Looks no one carries dedicated scanners much any more.

If the HP Photosmart C5280 has good disk printing, AND is good on ink, I might consider it. It looks to be fairly inexpensive...which is what worries me.

Thanks!

Well, i've only had it a week now, and only done one job with it so far. I'm not sure how well it will perform in the long run. I really only got it for CD/DVD printing and don't really care about the other features since i already have a good printer and a good scanner. That being said ...

I printed about 50 discs rather full coverage, and double-sided inserts for the cases with a nearly solid color front. I ran out of ink on the last four inserts. Of course, i was using the starter cartridges that came with the printer which are only half-full of ink or less. I would have printed the inserts on my other printer (HP 932C) but that was unexpectedly out of ink too. There are "xl" cartridges available with twice as much ink for only a few bucks more than the regular cartridges so i'll be ordering those. The regular color cartridge is about $18, the xl cartridge is about $23. If i get 100 discs and inserts out of an xl color cartridge and a $16 black cartridge that works out to about 40 cents worth of ink each. The ink density is high enough that there is no need for a second pass.

It does have a special tray. Seems pretty sturdy, it's floppy rather than stiff so it probably won't crack or break easily. It has an insert for 8cm discs. It holds the discs pretty tightly so there's no wobbling. The tray will stick out through the back of the printer about 3" during the printing so make sure you leave room behind the printer.

I've barely tested the scanner. I didn't install the scanning software on anything other than my print server and haven't tried it from there yet. It does have the ability to scan directly to a memory cartridge, but it will only do a full bed scan at 300dpi, no other options. That scan looked very nice though.

And yes, it prints on ordinary generic printable discs. The speed is amazing. It varies for no reason i've devined yet, but it seems to take between 20 and 40 seconds.

I'm thinking about getting another one for my parents. They just got their first digital camera, but they're less than enthused about using the computer to get the pictures. I figure with this thing they can just plug the camera's memory stick into the printer, browse through the pictures, and press a button to print. No computer necessary.

kentwolf:
They still sell dedicated scanners for about a dedicated $500.00. Some for less depending on the software included.
JJK

Thanks for the stats for the HP unit. Much appreciated.

>>...sell dedicated scanners for about a dedicated $500.00..

Yeah, I saw that. I live not too far from CDW, so I can get pretty good stuff there.

Even if the (HP) scanner is not that great, I might be able to live with it. I did see that the ink for this HP unit is dramatically lower cost than my epson.

My Epson R200 printer cost $99. It costs me about that much, plus a little more for a complete ink changout. That just seems excessive. Plus, if I put in a new Epson cartridge, after only a few prints, the ink level has dropped a mark. I pretty much only use it for disk printing, only occasional photos. It gets pretty light useage. One of the colors (pick one) seems to always be running low. It's just getting ridiculous.

I also only want the HP unit primarily for disk printing. It would be nice though if it did a half-way decent job on scanning too. The problem with my dead HP scanner was that it would not hold a default scanning resolution of 300 DPI. I had to manually set it every time. Not a crisis, but just a pain. In general, I never use the software that comes with hardware, whatever it may be. I like for Windows to manage it. It just seems like much of the software that comes witrh hardware is usually half-baked, at best.

Thanks for the info, guys.

Kent, I don't know where you are buying your ink, but Costco sells an Epson cartridge set for the R200 for about $55.

I just got an Epson all in one R680 which does disc printing among many other things. It cost about a hundred dollars after the fifty dollar rebate. Anyway, it seems to work better than my old R200 and also scans to memory card or thumbdrive in either jpeg or pdf formats. The printout looks outstanding.

Two things would be important for me. The price pr. disc and the printing time. Atm I have an Epson R800 and a Canon iP5300 and they both do a decent job in ok time and price pr. disc. The 40 cents you have calculated Kelly, sems ok to me, but in Denmark it would probably be 80. It is still not alarming if you just calculate it in for the clients price.

I have never really calculated on this for my Epson and Canon, but my fear is that ink for printers like this and the primeras etc. are quite expensive because they are niche products. A lot of other users buy canon, epson etc. for other purposes - that way the demand for cheap ink is always there.

I would sure go out and check for the prices in Denmark for this baby - and there is still room under the tree ;-)

/Ulf

Ink costs for printing DVDs has never worried me, ink for slicks is another matter entirely!

If you print a lot of stuff on inkjet printers regularly a CIS seems the way to go, that'll reduce your ink costs to 10% of what you're paying now and save a lot of wasted resources. The other option for printing slicks is a colour laser printer. One day, space and funds permitting I'll certainly be investing in a colour laser printer.

Bob.

What i didn't calculate was the cost for printing just the discs, since my run included both CDs and inserts. I'm going to guess though that probably the ink usage was about 63% for the discs and 37% for the inserts (trying to do geometry in my head and adjust for estimated ink density after being woken up by the boss at 3:20am to investigate a database problem ... yes it's very sad how i abuse my brain) so perhaps the disc printing cost is around 25 cents. The price of the large capacity cartridges might bring that down to 19 cents each.

Bob, referencing my previous post about mental activity ... i'm at a loss here. What's CIS?

Continuous Ink System. Bulk ink fed by little tubes into a modified cartridge.

I have received my DiscPainter today. It has also been sent in for repair today.The printout had missing lines in it. Even the test printout. Cleaning did not help. Trying another ink cartridge did not help. What I have noticed is that the foam inserted near the print head for transport had already ink on it, so I think maybe the unit I got was not a new one. Thankfully B&H customer service is excellent and they will exchange it immediately. Unfortunately due to the fact that I live in Europe, this transaction will likely cost me 100$ for transport. Let's hope the I have a better experience with the replacement which should arrive in one week.
So until now I cannot recommend it, but maybe this will change once I get a working one.

David, How did you end up faring with the Dymo? Did the replacement work any better? I notice they still don't have Vista64 bit drivers, so I can't use it anyway, but it looks interesting other than that.

Hi,

the replacement had exactly the same problems, so I abandoned on it and continued to use my good old canon MP800R. Also I have read about the same problems in a german computer magazine.

Bye,
David Arendt

So you had to pay the shipping twice?! Wow that must have been frustrating. Thanks for letting us know. It looks so nice on their webpage....

"My Epson R200 printer cost $99. It costs me about that much, plus a little more for a complete ink changout. That just seems excessive. Plus, if I put in a new Epson cartridge, after only a few prints, the ink level has dropped a mark. I pretty much only use it for disk printing, only occasional photos. It gets pretty light useage. One of the colors (pick one) seems to always be running low. It's just getting ridiculous."

My 4 year old R200 is churning out discs pretty well. After 2 complete cartridge replacements I went with the continuous ink supply (CIS) from tape.com (about 10 cartridges worth of ink in each of the 4 colors for a total of around $60.) Unbelievable, six months of use and the ink levels (clear bottles) don't seem to have budged. http://www.tape.com/DM68-03-200-00.html There's also a unit for the R260 at around $90. Refill ink is $30 for a set of all colors.

As I mentioned in this forum before, the Epson cartridges lie about how much ink there's left in them. I've driven a cartridge to the 0 level mark and, when I removed the cartidge, I took it apart and to my surprise saw that there was at least 40% ink left in the unit.

As I mentioned in this forum before, the Epson cartridges lie about how much ink there's left in them. I've driven a cartridge to the 0 level mark and, when I removed the cartridge, I took it apart and to my surprise saw that there was at least 40% ink left in the unit. I think you posted about this before, so when my crummy R260 decided to dump all its ink and suddenly told me I was out of ink on all my cartridges, I took those cartridges out to my shop, put on rubber gloves, and started drilling holes. I put about ten holes in each cartridge, but not a drop of ink.

So, in my case, the printer wasn't lying. However, I had only done a few hundred discs, with about 10% coverage (just text and logo over no background), so the ink should have still been 95%, not 0%. Amazing waste.

My guru buddy purchases a new inkjet printer when the ink cartriges are empty (no brand in particular) thus saving about 10 bucks. The Epson ink cartridges in my case has had some that last and some that empty real quick. I opened up one that was empty and all I could find was a sponge which took up the entire volume of the cartrdge. If the sponge was not there you could put in 90% more ink. (maybe) The bit about shutting off the Epson printer with the on/off button rankles me to no end. Very dumb. I do this on the R1800 (Photo Printer) and 960 (DVD Printer) but not on the older Epsons which run consistantly with no problems of clogging. I have a 1996 HP 3C scanner which still functions just fine but the new HP stuff (American military video fixing the printer with an M16 in automatic fire.) just ain't in the same neighborhood. They don't like to make new drivers and like to stick with the old stuff. My 3C driver is really old. Some of their newer (Cheapo) scanners which have been discontinued never even had XP drivers. I probably will never purchase an HP printer or scanner again because of their very lame driver efforts. I used to use HP electronic test equipment in the 60's and 70's and it was super stuff, even the solid state stuff with pluggins. And the Epson R1800 really does blow away the HP's for photos.
JJK