Disco USD $29.95
Website: discoapp.com
When only in it’s beta stages, I proudly gave Disco a five star rating this past December. It’s an affordable, simple to use alternative to Roxio’s Toast, boasting nearly all the disc burning features a casual user would never need. In addition to it’s remarkable amount of features and level of simplicity, Disco has one of the most eloquent user interfaces available on any operating platform. If you know of the application, chances are it caught your eye with the smoke that emits from the application while you’re burning. Unfortunately, at the time of the review that feature was not available to anyone with the Intel GMA950 Graphics Processor, leaving Mac mini and MacBook users in the dark.
With the 1.0 milestone, Disco has made a less capable version of Smoke available to the majority of modern Macs. It currently lacks full interaction on some of the less powerful Macs, but we are happy to see less people being left out. Despite this major feature now being common to the majority of users, Disco still retains some of its previous flaws. Its imaging and burning system is currently limited to IMG, ISO, DMG, BIN/CUE files, which can greatly hinder those migrating from other platforms. Support for other formats like Padus DiscJuggler’s CDI/CDJ or MDF/MDS images is sorely lacking. For some, this will make the extra money for a different application worth spending.
Other lacking features are only noticeable if you are making your comparison to applications like Roxio’s Toast and Popcorn. You will not find Disco to be the DVD authoring application you may have been hoping for, however it will properly burn VIDEO_TS folders already authored. Regardless of its not being an entire media burning suite, Disco makes itself worth every penny. Discography is the perfect companion for anyone who wants to keep their burning track record organized. Spanning, the ability to spread large files and folders across multiple DVDs and CDs, is also an ability so useful you’ll find yourself missing when using other burning applications.
As of March 5th, 2007 the introductory price of USD $14.95 has ceased, and the full price of USD $29.95 is in effect. A 3 user family pack is available for USD $59.90, and is worth every penny. A free trial of seven burns is provided at the official Disco website, and a fantastic article on the history of the application was recently published on their blog. Disco being without a doubt one of the top applications to keep your eye on in 2007, it’s safe to say we can expect nothing but the best from the team behind it in the future.
Hmm, I hadn’t noticed that they increased the price after the introductory offer of $14.95. Originally they stated that the normal price would be $24.95. Oh, well. It’s a wonderful burning app at a fair price.
Actually, at the time my original review was published that “normal” price was at $21.95. Fantastic application, but if they were to charge anymore than the current $29.95 I wouldn’t be able to give it as strong of a recommendation to the everyday user. Truly is an amazing program though, it’s a shame you see so many people dismiss it as “only eye candy.”
-Andrew
I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned the feature whereby multiple burn sessions can be performed until the disc is finally full, but this does not result in more thanone disc icon on the desktop, as was the case with previous multi-session burners.
Has anyone ever noticed (at least on a MacBook pro) then when you blow on the keyboard (around the mic) that it “blows” the smoke off he screen?
A few months back (maybe not that long) I was testing this out as a simple CD burner for people who just don’t get it. I was shocked and amazed when I jokingly blew on my screen to clear the smoke and it worked!
It didn’t take me long to figure out it was the mic in the top-case of the MBPro. I haven’t heard anyone point this out yet so I figured that since it’s back on your page I’d let everyone know.
@ Steve Cooper: Excellent observation. I personally have not used Multi-Session burning enough to realize how great that is, but it is an excellent feature.
@Chris Hafner: It would appear that option is enabled on most macs, however for some reason it would not respond to the mic I put on my Mac Mini. But I think that was more or less because it’s a janky mic, and USB. Smoke has different levels of interactivity on each Mac. I’d imagine they are only going to come up with more great ideas for Smoke.
-Andrew