You can get a refurb off ebay (or elsewhere) and they come with a 1 year warranty- referring to the Bravo II. This is what I did and I had a problem with the burner (it malfunctioned) and the ink started leaking. I sent it back in and they had it back to me in no time, fixed (new OEM burner) and the spring on the ink casing tightened and it has worked fine for over a year and a half with no coasters.

The ink is expensive and according to the levels- it doesn't last long- but I found that if you reset the level and keep using the ink- I printed over 40 more discs with a myriad of print designs ranging from full disc and hub to simple text and logos. The black lasts longer as it doesn't use it as much as the color cartridge.

I would also recommend using another program for design work and then importing that into Surething (I would also upgrade to Surething 4.0 deluxe) as I don't think you can import into the one that comes with the Bravo.
What I do is import the background image into surething and then export it as a tif into my image editor- then I add text and tweak and then I export it back into surething as the background file. The reason I first export out of surething is that it goes ahead and makes it conform to the size/shape of the cd top upon export- i.e. it is round.

Surething is not the best program, but if you use something other for editing/designing, it should work fine for you.

j razz