There is also a third (and possibly more) disc labeling hardware that seems to be without support similar to Label Flash. I have a “Label Tag” optical drive that is advertised to add a label on the recording side of a standard disc. I have never gotten this hardware to work. PERIOD! I bought the product 2 or 3 years ago and spent considerable time experimenting and researching and have NEVER gotten it to print the first tag on a CD or DVD. A software CD came with the device, but just does not work. If anyone is needing a disc labeler, stick with Lightscribe. I also had a Gateway computer with a Label Flash drive factory installed and I never found a Label Flash disc, so it was as worthless as the Label Tag device. (This Gateway computer also had Vista OS so I didn’t keep it long.)
There was also Tattoo You, (or something like that) put out by Yamaha, I think. I had one a few years ago. It burned the labels on the data side, so you were restricted to using the outer part of the disc that had no data.
It was awful! You could barely read it (mainly by tilting the disc back and forth to get the lighting just right).
I use Lightscribe exclusively now, even though Memorex Lightscribe discs are all that are available locally. You have to take the bad with the good.
Has anyone tried one of the printers that print ink directly on the discs? Are the discs widely available, and reasonably priced?
Burning labels on the data side still works, as I mentioned. But yeah, it’s not particularly useful any more (if it ever was). I have used it on some of my disks so I know where often-referenced files reside.
The printers that print directly on the disks work quite well, from what I understand (a friend of mine has one and uses it a lot). You do have to pay extra for the special printable disks, but if you want nice labels on a lot of disks it would be worth the cost. Sticking adhesive labels on disks has always been an iffy proposition. I have done it successfully, but I’ve heard a lot of stories about those labels coming loose and destroying disk drives.
I used to use a lot of paper stick-on labels, but I have had a large percentage of them soon come loose. I have been lucky and have never had one destroy a CD drive (knock on wood), but I have heard of this from others.
A word of warning to even LightScribe users! I have several LightScribe CDs that are just a few years old and are faded almost unreadable. This may have a connection with the dime store quality of the disks that I normally find. I think my trusty Sharpie remains the overall most satisfactory disk labeler. I sometimes try to get fancy and do some rudimentary drawings with my Sharpie; even with multi-colors on occasion.
I agree–the vast majority of my disks are labeled with a Sharpie. I even bought a package of several colored Sharpies that are designed for writing on disks. I have no idea if those are actually different from the common everyday Sharpie, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. 🙂
wydaho
10 years ago
You can add Labelflash templates with some effort. It’s been awhile, but as I remember I just resized a .jpg image to 1600 x 1600 pixels and put it in the lim120enimage directory.
I’m glad to hear that you can still get some use out of LabelFlash. It was a great idea that just didn’t get enough support.
wydaho
10 years ago
One more thing on my earlier post about adding a template. I forgot that besides the image you have to add set up parameters to the file “lim.ini”. Basically each template has a segment of the ini file that describes how to handle the printing. I just pick a segment that looked something like I wanted and then tinkered with it.
PS: Thanks for keeping this thread active – maybe someone will get inspired to update the software.
There is also a third (and possibly more) disc labeling hardware that seems to be without support similar to Label Flash. I have a “Label Tag” optical drive that is advertised to add a label on the recording side of a standard disc. I have never gotten this hardware to work. PERIOD! I bought the product 2 or 3 years ago and spent considerable time experimenting and researching and have NEVER gotten it to print the first tag on a CD or DVD. A software CD came with the device, but just does not work. If anyone is needing a disc labeler, stick with Lightscribe. I also had a Gateway computer with a Label Flash drive factory installed and I never found a Label Flash disc, so it was as worthless as the Label Tag device. (This Gateway computer also had Vista OS so I didn’t keep it long.)
Thanks for sharing this John.
There was also Tattoo You, (or something like that) put out by Yamaha, I think. I had one a few years ago. It burned the labels on the data side, so you were restricted to using the outer part of the disc that had no data.
It was awful! You could barely read it (mainly by tilting the disc back and forth to get the lighting just right).
I use Lightscribe exclusively now, even though Memorex Lightscribe discs are all that are available locally. You have to take the bad with the good.
Has anyone tried one of the printers that print ink directly on the discs? Are the discs widely available, and reasonably priced?
Burning labels on the data side still works, as I mentioned. But yeah, it’s not particularly useful any more (if it ever was). I have used it on some of my disks so I know where often-referenced files reside.
The printers that print directly on the disks work quite well, from what I understand (a friend of mine has one and uses it a lot). You do have to pay extra for the special printable disks, but if you want nice labels on a lot of disks it would be worth the cost. Sticking adhesive labels on disks has always been an iffy proposition. I have done it successfully, but I’ve heard a lot of stories about those labels coming loose and destroying disk drives.
I used to use a lot of paper stick-on labels, but I have had a large percentage of them soon come loose. I have been lucky and have never had one destroy a CD drive (knock on wood), but I have heard of this from others.
A word of warning to even LightScribe users! I have several LightScribe CDs that are just a few years old and are faded almost unreadable. This may have a connection with the dime store quality of the disks that I normally find. I think my trusty Sharpie remains the overall most satisfactory disk labeler. I sometimes try to get fancy and do some rudimentary drawings with my Sharpie; even with multi-colors on occasion.
I agree–the vast majority of my disks are labeled with a Sharpie. I even bought a package of several colored Sharpies that are designed for writing on disks. I have no idea if those are actually different from the common everyday Sharpie, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. 🙂
You can add Labelflash templates with some effort. It’s been awhile, but as I remember I just resized a .jpg image to 1600 x 1600 pixels and put it in the lim120enimage directory.
I’m glad to hear that you can still get some use out of LabelFlash. It was a great idea that just didn’t get enough support.
One more thing on my earlier post about adding a template. I forgot that besides the image you have to add set up parameters to the file “lim.ini”. Basically each template has a segment of the ini file that describes how to handle the printing. I just pick a segment that looked something like I wanted and then tinkered with it.
PS: Thanks for keeping this thread active – maybe someone will get inspired to update the software.