OEM consumables (was Real-world ink longevity test)

Arthur Entlich wrote:

It all supports my "own case" in that many types of CD media are not labeled as to manufacturer at all, and much of it is labeled with a false manufacturer, as even the major manufacturers were buying surplus product wherever it could be located and branding it, so very few people actually know who made the product they bought, unless they used software which reads this information. Therefore, you cannot make assumptions just based upon the label of the package you bought. Further, almost every CD-R manufacturer made numerous changes in the dyes they used over the years, so once again, such assumptions are questionable, regardless of the "brand" one has purchased. Since we are speaking of archiving, we are speaking about disks purchased and burned numerous years ago now, not just the ones people will find today. As you state, the fact that you aren't addressing the older stuff "doesn't get their data back".

In one personal example, I bought two packages of Sony CD-R disks some years ago. One was manufactured in Japan, the other China. Packaging was otherwise identical, and they were even bought at the same time for the same price. With one exception, all the Chinese origin disks either failed on burning or soon after, all the Japanese origin disks have continued to work just fine.

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See above. By the way, does your "confidence" translate into a guarantee for anyone reading your message? If so, please provide your snailmail address so we know where to send the lawsuits when our CD media fails and we lose our data during our lifetimes.


Having worked in audio for a long time, the trustworthiness of media is somthing that has mattered to me. I used to trust Maxell and TDK implicitely: their recording tape was the best. Those days are gone. I do use software that reveals the disk manufacturer. It's not that rare. For example, the free program "Exact Audio Copy" will show you. I have Fuji disks made by four different companies, none of them Fuji. My Sony experience duplicates yours, except that the country was Taiwan; I forgot the manufacturer, and my cheap CD-alarm clock and my car stereo both give audible read errors with these disks, because _the disks are not round!_ Plonk Sony. I'm certain that TDK video cassettes have ruined my two best VCRs; I heard the friction in the shells in disbelief.

Ironically, the prices of cheap disks have gone up of late. I use them for short-term stuff, although I avoid the really cheap junk.

The only CDRs I'm using for anything that I want to keep these days are made by Taiyo Yuden, in Japan. I have some premium Maxells that are made by TY, but why pay the premium price when I can get the same disks under the manufacturer's imprint for a lot less in bulk? God only knows who Memorex is this month -- last I looked, they were located in Hong Kong, with legal HQ in the Cayman Islands, and their CEO was getting busted for fraud. Check it out. Many consumer brands are just empty marketing shells that are licensed out. RCA, GE (consumer electronics), Memorex, IBM, Timex, HP (paper, CDRs) lease out their trademarks to others in unrelated businesses; RCA merchandise at Radio Shack is just ordinary Radio Shack stuff. RCA (and that part of GE)is a trademark of Thomson, a French company manufacturing in China, and farming out their brand, too.

These name-brand media companies have changed into marketing shysters trading on their old image: they disgust me.

Richard

So what you're telling us is that when you purchase OEM name-brand paper or recording media, you don't know who the manufacturer is, the quality is inconsistant, and the OEM can change suppliers at any time, so you don't know what you're getting. Is that about right?

Hmmm... Seems like I've heard that song before. Can't help but wonder if they are so cavalier about THOSE things, why should I think it would be any different with ink?

TJ

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