Most home-produced CDs and DVDs—not to mention many made and distributed by small businesses—have bland if not ugly labeling, often simply scribbled on with a Sharpie. But whether you're in a business that involves distributing optical discs or you're burning a collection of your own photos, videos, or music, you can print discs that look as if they're professionally labeled. The DYMO DiscPainter CD/DVD Printer ($280 street) does a fine job of that. The only question is whether you can justify its price.

In addition to people who label their personal discs, potential users include people with small businesses in creative areas—photographers, videographers, musicians, and artists—who create demo discs, send interim or final product to clients, or, in the case of musicians, sell their own discs at performances. The printer also fits well in more conventional offices, where the ability to label individual discs is useful for presentations and handouts in sales and marketing, or even for labeling discs for archived files and regular backups.

The DiscPainter is shaped vaguely like a wide, ankle-high boot, with the print mechanism on the side where your ankle would go, and the disc tray normally resting at the toe end. When you print, the tray slides back, so the disc is under the printhead, which stays still as the disc spins under it. The disc tray then slowly slides forward towards the "toe" as printing progresses. You can even see the progress through the transparent tray cover. The overall size is 4.3 by 5.7 by 10.6 inches (HWD), but only the back half, with the print mechanism, is actually 4.3 inches high. The front half is about 1.5 inches high.

Setup is straightforward. Remove the packing materials, open the lid over the print mechanism, pop in the three-color ink jet cartridge, run the automated installation routine from disc, and plug in the supplied USB cable. You can then put a disc into the tray (the printer takes only one disc at a time) and print from any Windows program. The installation routine even copies templates to your hard drive to use with QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign.

Even though you can use any program, I'd expect most people to print using the Discus for DYMO program that's installed along with the driver. Discus is reasonably easy to use. It includes a variety of options that let you exercise your creativity with minimal skill—or minimal time, for those who are skilled in design. You can choose from a large set of colorful backgrounds and fairly sophisticated templates. Some templates even let you insert multiple photos, each in its own frame, and adjust the number of frames. Text options let you set font; font size; enter text in straight lines, curves, or spirals; and add shadows, outlines, and glows.

DYMO claims that the DiscPainter can print a disc in about 1 minute in fast mode, 2 minutes in the default normal mode, and 3 minutes in best mode. This is consistent with the times I saw, although the actual times vary with the image. For images with edge-to-edge coverage, I timed the printer at about 54 or 55 seconds in fast mode, 2 minutes 6 seconds to 2:14 in normal mode, and 2:37 to 3:11 in best mode. On the other hand, a one-line text label in best mode took only 1:07.

Output quality and image durability depends more on the discs you use than the printer itself. You can buy printable discs with a matte or glossy finish, and both with and without a claim to being waterproof. Within any given category, different brands can give you different results. For my tests, DYMO supplied waterproof glossy discs. The output in fast mode had a bit of a draft mode look to it, particularly for photos. Normal and best mode looked fully professional, and the discs survived my water test without any noticeable effect.

All of which brings me back to price as the only real issue for the DiscPainter. DYMO claims a cost per disc of 39 cents, based on a yield of 100 discs for each $39 ink cartridge. The company says this is a conservative claim based on using the highest resolution, with ink density set at maximum, and using discs with a printable hub to print the maximum area for each disc.

Keep in mind, however, that you also have to amortize the cost of the printer. The DiscPainter is rated to last for 2,000 discs. In reality it may last longer, or you may not print enough to get anywhere near 2,000 over its lifetime. But assuming you print 2,000 discs, at $280 for the printer, it works out to 14 cents more per disc, for a total of 53 cents per disc. Then, of course, there's the cost of the discs themselves. Glossy, waterproof CD-Rs can currently cost 50 cents or more each, depending on how many you buy at once.

If you can't justify the cost, you may want to consider one of the Epson or HP printers, such as the HP Photosmart C5280 All-In-One Printer, that can print standard output as well as discs. The C5280 costs less than the DiscPainter as well. (Another alternative, of course, is to use paste-on paper labels, though they simply don't have the same professional look.) But if you can swing the DiscPainter's cost, it will give you professional-looking labels with minimal effort and reasonably fast.

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