has shown in the past that can offer significant solutions for CD/DVD labeling. The company has shipped two lines of printers, the Inscripta thermal Transfer printers and the Signature Inkjet printers. The printer we have in our hands belongs to the Signature Inkjet line and comes with the name “SignaturePro”. SignaturePro is the most advanced color printer ever offered by Primera. Some of the main features of the printer are the 2400 dpi printing resolution, the quick printing and the remarkable ink capacity. Primera claims that SignaturePro delivers all the performance you need for higher-volume, high-quality disc printing – at a price that is surprisingly affordable. What’s left is to find it out in practice...

- Main specifications

As mentioned before, SignaturePro is an inkjet printer. The printing resolutions offered are 2400 x 1200 dpi, 1200 x 1200 dpi, 600 x 600 dpi or 600 x 300 dpi (driver selectable). The applied inkjet technology produces 2.88 million pixels per square inch in up to 16.7 million colors.

The printing speed depends upon the percentage of coverage and the selected print mode. It takes approximately 111seconds for a 100%, full-color coverage, in 2400 dpi Photo mode, about 60 seconds for a 1200 dpi print in Presentation mode (default), 51 seconds for a 600 dpi print in Best mode, 34 seconds for a 600 dpi print in Normal mode and about 16 seconds for a 600 dpi print in Fast mode.

The label editing software included is Sure Thing First Edition for Windows. Also the PrimaColor built-in color matching software offered comes to deliver brighter and more photo-realistic colors. The software notifies the user as ink levels get close to empty. Also, it estimates how many discs can be printed based upon the disc’s layout and design

The ink cartridges supplied are a dual-cartridge 3-color (C.M, Y) and a black monochrome (K).

The media types supported are all printable-surface 120mm CD-R or DVD-R, and with additional adapter kit, 58mm x 86 mm printable-surface business card CDs. Primera recommends for optional printing results the usage of media from the authorized media partners listed below.

The data interface supported is Centronics-type parallel but the printer will also work with the most USB to parallel cables for USB-only PCs. The supplied drivers work under Windows 95/98/ME and Win2K OS.

Lastly, for fully automated disc production, Primera Conductor Printer Autoloader can be used in order to automatically load up to 50 discs per batch into and out of SignaturePro. The SignaturePro costs $1895 for the main unit. The color and monochrome cartridges cost $57.95 each.

- Test Machine

WinMe/Win2k
Soyo 7VCA
Celeron II 566 over clocked to 850 MHz
128MB SDRAM PC 133
WD 18GB UDMA 66
Quantum Fireball EX 6.4GB
SCSI: DAWI 2975 - PCI (ULTRA)
ATI AIW 128