Epson R220 vs R280 for CD printing?

I have been using an R220 for CD printing for work for the past couple of years. When it works, the results are decent, but it's slow and I find the printer kicking out the tray every 4 or 5 discs, I then have to cancel the 100 copy print job and restart it in the application. Extremely time consuming.

I'm wondering if
a) the R280 is any faster
b) if it's more reliable in terms of feeding the tray

I hear Epson has a 100 disc capacity burner/printer coming Q1 of 2008, but I suspect it's going to be way out of my budget. Work has no problem dumping $100-$200 on a printer, but over that and I'd need serious justification given that I only do print runs of 100 copies maybe once every couple of months.

Thanks!

If you're doing 100 disc jobs, I'm not surprised you have printer troubles.

The R220 is a discontinued model, I think, and I'm not sure what print engine it uses. The R280 uses the 6-ink engine that is common to the R260, R280, R380 and R580 as well as a number of the multi-function units. It can produce much better photos than the R220 would, but results on discs might look much the same. My R280 is average in speed for high-quality print jobs, maybe 1-2 min per disc. The R280 does have a uni-directional vs bi-directional print setting that affects speed a lot.

I think I would be willing to pay a considerable amount to NOT have to sit and feed 100 discs into a printer, although getting paid for it might be OK. www.rima.com has a number of units that feed a spindle of discs automatically, prices vary. Units like the proposed Epson publishing machine generally sell around $1500-$2500. You could put together a cost projection for your boss that details what they might save by NOT paying you to sit and print and burn, vs the cost of the machine.

Depending on what you're printing, might it be worth looking at the thermal printing systems? They are mono-chrome, but results look very nice.

Thanks, the 220 is also a 6 cartridge system, it's mostly the feed problems that I find frustrating. It doesn't sound like the 280 is any quicker if it's taking 1-2 min per disc. That's about what the 220 takes. Again, given the frequency of how often I have to do 100 disc runs, I can live with the 220. I was just hoping I could get a big improvement by dropping $100 for a different printer. I'm doing full color stuff, so thermal is out. In fact anything over a few hundred bucks is out . This is a start up, money is extremely tight.

Well, you can read my thread on my R280 at the top of this forum. I recommend it for situations where only disc or photo printing is needed. I do not give it heavy use though. Prices on this model are pretty low, I even saw one for free with a new camera purchase.

I did read the review, but I'm specifically interested in a direct comparison to the R220 as far as speed and load reliability so it didn't really help. It was a great review though if you don't own a CD printer already and are looking to buy. I'm looking for a cheap upgrade.