TrulyObscure - article - gadgeteer - Sign Your Discs: Signature's Z1 Almost Great

This isn’t exactly a new product but we haven’t found much out there that’s better, and with the release and growing popularity of the Lightscribe system we wanted to take a closer look at Primera’s neat thermal printer.

The Signature Z1 prints in monochrome, but you can choose from red, blue, or black- and disks turn out fairly sharp. Best of all, unlike Lightscribe, you don’t need to use special disks- you can use most any CD or DVD with a blank surface.

Put the Sharpies away! Smudgeproof, waterproof, and all around durable, disks printed with the Z1 look fairly professional. The software is easy to use, and the device is easy to install. Unfortunately, you can’t use a Macintosh or Apple or Linux computer- it must be Windows 2000 or XP. The printer itself also is a bit hefty, and must be plugged in separately instead of using a single USB cable (to be fair, lasers are high-powered devices, unlikely to use low-powered USB cables anytime soon).

The worse downsides are the speed- it can take longer to burn the label onto the CD than to burn the information- and the fact you can only print 100-200 disks per cartridge ($20 each). Nonetheless, the Signature Z1 is an affordable option ($120 or so for the printer, software, and one cartridge). It’s easy to use, and effective for your demo CDs or your own personal DVD collection, as long as you don’t plan on printing on the whole disk or need multiple colors or fancy graphics.