14 DAY TRIAL // Although we can burn CDs and DVDs from the Finder, the great majority of people prefer using a dedicated program for burning. Despite Roxio's Toast being the most popular and widely spread application for this sort of task, there are several other alternatives which are cheaper to acquire and in some ways simpler to use.
Disk Layout? Not exactly DTP, is it? DiscBlaze keeps everything in one window, no unnecessary tabs, and no drawers. Other than the Preferences in which you only really need to go in one, you will be working with the main window. Very similar to iTunes when you have a playlist selected, the window is split into two halves, the right being where the disk layout are, and the left being where their contents are shown.
At a first impression, it might seem that you cannot rename the discs, forever damning them to 'New Disk' anonymity and confusion. There is no menu command, no contextual menu, hitting Enter does nothing except bring up that 'this key does nothing' sound. After a few minutes of frustration and confusion I found that the disk layouts can be renamed by double clicking them. Even if there is no visual indication that you are in text edit mode, other than the mouse cursor, and what you are typing does not show, until you change focus to another item inside the program, it can be done. Very unpleasant, to say the least. Interestingly enough, if you add enough disks to make the scroll bar appear, or resize the disk layout so that at least one name does not fit entirely, the renaming will work as expected with a textbox appearing and everything.
Another thing I have noted is that there is no delete confirmation. There is no option for deletion confirmation anywhere, I cannot imagine why.
As a last note on the subject, if you select a disk layout, and press the 'Custom Icon' Button and select a custom icon, you then also have to tick the checkbox so that it knows you want to use a custom icon. Why on Earth would you go press the Custom Icon button and then drag an icon from the list to the well if you did not want to use that icon?
Bring on the files The Files list in the right half of window shows us the content of the currently selected CD. Like the CD list, there is no deletion confirmation, so be careful when you add files. Drag and drop works decent enough, with the exception of Audio CDs in which you can only drag Audio files. You can add MP3s and many other file formats but only through the add button, not drag and drop. For any other disk type you can just drop away and it will work fine.
We have a tickbox to designate whether we want an item to be burned or not, handy perhaps if you want to burn very very similar CDs and just change a few files for each one. One thing to note is that dechecking an item for burning will not take that item off the current size of CD display, leaving you estimate on your own approximately how much all those checked files add to. The mind boggles.
Also items added to the file list cannot be modified in any way. That is to say if you add a folder, you cannot enter and browse that folder, adding or deleting files, you cannot create folders inside the application in order to organize the information you are about to burn, you have to do all this outside, in the Finder. Even the Finder's built in Burn option can do this. Not being able to interact in any way with the files you are about to burn is a severe limitation to say the least.
In the end, the only options that DiscBlaze offers and you can't do with the Finder are burn and creating new disc images with the cdr and iso type. Also a nice feature is being able to designate the visibility of file, on Macs and PC when you burn a hybrid CD.
The Good It does offer some functions that the Finder does not have and it is cheaper than Toast.
The Bad Lacks certain important chunks of functionality, is a bit of an adventure to get used to and was clearly not designed for the people who write their information on a regular basis.
The Truth I cannot see this program as being a valid alternative to a serious burning utility. The price tag is not a point in its favor for the same reason that buying only one handcuff instead of a pair, even if it is significantly cheaper, is useless. This program might grow up to be big and strong, but for the time being, I would not recommend it over the Finder's built in burning.
Here are some screenshots so you can see what it looks like, click to enlarge:
