Until today I labeled my CDs with a permanent felt tip pen.  I haven't
had any problems so far and labeling is quick and easy.

Today I asked the people in the next wing (who make a lot of CDs) what
they do, especially for those one-of-a-kind CDs.  I was told that they
used to use a permanent felt tip pen to mark CDs, then they changed to the
round CD labels (that are printed on an inkjet printer) but that they
greatly reduced both practices once the new 16X and 20X CD-ROM drives
started to arrive.

I seems that some of the new high-speed CD-ROM drives are very balance
sensitive, and the balance can be thrown off when they write on the CDs with
the permanent felt tip pens.  They also started having problems with the
stick-on paper labels (the round labels made specifically for CDs) for
apparently the same reason.  They now use a fancy device that prints
directly on the CD.

I couldn't believe that writing on a CD with a permanent felt tip pen
would through the CD off balance enough to cause a problem until I saw it
with my own eyes.  He took CD that had been written to but had not had a
lablel printed on it and spun it up.  No problem.  Then he wrote on the
CD with the permanent felt tip pen "Test CD made 97\07\24@13:43" and spun
up the CD in a 16X CD-ROM drive.  The drive which a minute before had
been rather quiet was now quite noisy and vibrating quite a bit.  He put the
CD in an 8X CD-ROM drive, spun it up, and it was fine.

I guess the point is that if you have the latest and greatest high-speed
CD-ROM drives or plan to use them with your CDs in the future, you may
want to be careful about writing on the CDs with a felt tip pen, and try
to not write on just one portion of the CD (which is what was done in the
above test).  Write with a fine point permanent felt tip pen, write
small, write near the spindle hole, and spread your text evenly around
the spindle hole.

A reformed felt tip pen label writer,

John
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John Korb                            email: [log in to unmask]
Innovative Software Solutions, Inc.

The thoughts, comments, and opinions expressed herein are mine
and do not reflect those of my employer(s), or anyone else.