It is becoming more common for businesses, both small and large, to give away CD's and DVD's as promotional or informational items. A CD or DVD can hold volumes of information: Flash presentations, PowerPoint slide shows, entire websites, hundreds, or even thousands of documents and PDF files, movies, audio files, and even executable demos of software.

Another recent trend is the CD business card. The front of the CD is shaped somewhat similarly to a standard business card and the label is printed with the ordinary contact information. But, put the CD into a computer and full multimedia presentation about the card owner's business or product begins. Sometimes, there may a personal video introduction to help recipients of the card remember him or her, or to allow a more detailed narrative of what the card owner is all about.

But, if you've ever priced duplicating these CD's or DVD's, you'll quickly find that it is not cheap. Often times, there are minimum press runs that can make any business nervous. What if you print 1,000 CD's, but only give away 200 before the information becomes dated?

A personal CD or DVD duplicator is the answer. Burn just the amount of discs you might need for the immediate future - and burn them on demand. No waiting for a printer to finish your job, or charging you for minimum runs. Instead of trying to just burn one CD or DVD at a time, a duplicator frees up the computer for other processing tasks. Simply put the original in one slot and the blanks in the remaining slots and the duplicator gets to work.

Duplicators come in two primary sizes: towers and publisher platforms. A quick look at tower cases from such companies as Vact, Kanguru, and Microboards, and you'll see how they look like a standard tower computer case. One slot holds the original, and the remaining slots are for blanks. When the discs are done, the operator pulls all the copied discs out and reloads them. Towers are very fast, but most only duplicate the data on the original disc.

A publisher platform is another option, but usually also has a built in labeling machine for adding full-color labels to discs as they are burned. At a glance, it looks a bit like an inkjet printer. Most platform duplicators, such as those from Imation and Primera, pull from a stack of blanks, burn one disc at a time, print a label and put it on the disc, and then put the completed disc on a separate post. Platform duplicators usually can hold 20 to 50 blank discs. Although they are slower, they accomplish what two machines can do and can be left unattended.

There are some machines that have high-duplicating abilities, offered by Amtren and Rimage, which can do both, but these machines can cost well over $3,000 dollars. If you would like to duplicate CD's or DVD's and you need to duplicate more than one a week, consider investing in a duplicating machine. It will save you time and money.

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