Philip

Recently I picked up a Canon PIXMA iP4500 since it’s about the only decently priced inkjet that will print direct onto CD/DVD’s without much hassle. Since my writing skills have degraded and my friends complain that reading my hand written labels on discs is nigh-on-impossible it’s a good purchase idea. You simply fold out the specially designed inner front tray, pop the disc onto the plastic carrier and slide it in for the printer to access. After some aligning the disc goes in and gets printed onto.

Output slightly bleeds into the disc but it’s perfectly legible since I don’t consider discs to be excellent as a printable surface. The main thing is that the printing works, Canon gives you Mac OS X and Windows software to make it easy to set up and has all the presets for getting the disc done. I was eyeing up a HP Photosmart D5360 that could also do it, but the general feel was a bit flimsier than the Canon and felt like it could break apart easily.