Beware the amazing bargain…

David Dorn recounts a tale of woe, and hopes for a satisfactory resolution.

I love trying new things. That’s probably why I’ve made a career out of writing about computers. It’s also why I thought that these relatively new credit-card sized CD-Rs were a good idea.

Just in case you didn’t already know, you can buy completely rectangular blanck CDs that are the exact same size as a credit card. They have a circular area onto which you can burn data – they hold 30MB or so. They were a bit specialist a year or two back, and, accordingly, quite expensive – you were looking at at least two quid a blank when 80 minute CD blanks were around 80p each.

They’re a bit more reasonable now, though, and, indeed, are being sold in places like WH Smith and their ilk. In other words, they’ve become mainstream.

But, as with CDs, there’s a rub to this. What seems like a bargain often isn’t.

Being a bit adventurous, I decided to grab hold of a “starter kit” at a branch of a well-known “wholesale warehouse”. The cost? £14.95 plus VAT got me a starter kit and an extra box of ten blanks. Inside the kit was a small selection of labels, blanks and an applicator to get the labels onto the card/disk itself.

Burning

What I wanted to do was to create a shortish – 3 minute – montage of clips from songs my band performs to burn to the CD so that, should anyone ask, I could give them our “business card” and let them hear what we can do. It seems like a great idea – much better than carrying full sized CDs around in my jacket pocket.

Actually creating the montage and burning it to the card turned out to be no problem. In this case, the card would accept up to 8x burn speeds – not onerous for such a small amount of data – and it’s actually shaped on the underside to allow it to fit into the vast majority of CD burners without problems.

So far so good. As part of the package, you also get a utility to allow you to create the business card bit – the label you’re going to stick onto the blank itself. Again, it’s easy enough to use, and the enjoyable task of designing a business card occupied a gentle hour or two of design work while I tweaked fonts and placements.

The labels printed nicely from my HP inkjet, dried quickly, and didn’t curl. Wonderful!

Next came the task of actually sticking the label to the blank I’d burned. I got the applicator out of the box, and looked around for the instructions

RTFM

As most folks will know, I tend to regard manuals as something you read when all other avenues have failed, or when you simply have no idea. I looked at the applicator, sorted out how to get the CD card into it, and then tried to work out how to get the thing to actually place the label onto the card. It certainly wasn’t immediately obvious.

So I hunted for the manual. There wasn’t one. No clue as to how to get the thing to work. I hit the Web, did a search, looking for instructions, hints, tips – anything. No luck. By this time, I’d become convinced that it must be me, that it was so simple it didn’t need a manual.

So, I had another look – and, yes, it did seem fairly obvious that you clipped the CD balnk in there, slid the label onto a little ridged bit, and closed the clamshell so that the two would meet and stick to each other.

So that’s what I did – or tried to do. But the label wouldn’t have it. It wouldn’t lie flat, wouldn’t come unstuck from my fingers, wouldn’t sit in place, and, more to the point, had no means of actually holding it in place so that it was properly positioned. The hole in the label blank is half a centimetre too large for the spigot that would hold it.

It wasn’t going to work. I had a think, and worked out that it would actually be easier to position the think to an edge of the blank, and do the job by hand, which is exactly what I tried. The trouble is, the glue is very, very sticky. It has to be, or the label will come off and gum up the insides of your CD player. So you’ve got to get it right first time.

Of course, I didn’t – I was slightly off. The label had only touched the very edge of the CD Blank – honest – and as I lifted it to try to reposition it, it lifted the whole of the silver layer completely off the blank itself.

The result? One completely wasted blank. I phoned the folks at www.e-promocard.com to see what they’d have to say. They promised to send me a better applicator, and a box of ten blanks for my trouble.

As yet, they have not fulfilled their promise. I leave it to you to decide whether or not to buy from them…

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David Dorn