I've never used the DYMO, but I did just look it up, and it may or may not be interesting, depending on the application. The ink is still very expensive (similar to the Primera - 40 cents a disc or more (one Amazon review says 100 discs per $40 cartridge, while another says 35 discs per cartridge) for ink alone, bringing the total cost of the CD to 75 cents to $1.25), and a proprietary cartridge that will keep the price high (neither this nor the Primera will sell in enough volume to interest any third-party ink company). It's slow (about the same speed as the Epson, and significantly slower than the Primera). It's a three-color, single cartridge printer, reducing potential quality and increasing ink cost - a yellow disc will run the yellow out very quickly (for example), and any disc with a lot of black will run all three colors down quickly while producing muddy, greenish-brown blacks. Most Primeras are four-color, dual cartridge machines(they make a three-color, single-cartridge version, but it's not much cheaper than their least expensive four-color model). A four-color, dual cartridge (three-color plus a separate black)printer will have the same problem with yellow discs as a three-color printer, but the disc with black both looks better and uses up a larger-capacity, much cheaper black cartridge instead of the expensive color cartridge. The other drawback of the Dymo compared to the Primera is that it is a single-loader and has to be babysat every few minutes, while the Primera will do a run of 25 discs at a time (there are versions that do many more than that) That said, it is a much cheaper machine than the Primera, and it seems to do essentially the same thing for about the same ink cost (unless you use a lot of black. At this point, all three have their place.
Epson for less than 50-100 discs per year - just know that the PRINTER is a consumable - which is environmentally HORRIBLE!
Dymo for 100-400 discs per year, spread out over the year, and of many different designs, so the single load isn't a big deal
Primera for 200-1000 discs per year, especially if there are a lot of batches of 10-100 of the same design in there where the Primera's loader is a big time-saver. The cost calculation between Dymo and Primera depends on two things - the time involved in reloading the Dymo and the amount of black on the discs, which gives the Primera an ink cost advantage.
Send out any job where the volume makes the setup cost worth it (a 100 disc job costs about the same to send out or run yourself, while a 1,000 disc job is much, MUCH cheaper to send out). A press is expensive to set up, but it prints the disc using a few pennies worth of ink instead of a dollar's worth.
-dan
