Hi I've got a question about putting photographs on CDs. Recently, I was
clearing the attic and found old photographs from my college semester in
Germany. This was all of ten years ago. I want to have them put on CD and
then have messageblaster.com mail them out and send invitations for a
reunion to every possible contact number and email I have. But how do I
burn a CD with photographs? How do I make twenty copies? Am I going to go
broke?
To create CDs, you need
1) a CD-R or CD-RW drive (also known as "CD burner") (the 2x models sell
for about $100 now) These always come with CD-creation software.
2) blank CD-R disks (as low as 70 cents each in quantity)
3) a bit of time.
4) for a really nice look to your CDs, labeling materials. ($30 for the
Neato kit which is excellent).
Scan your photos to your hard drive. Then start up the software that came
with your CD burner. It works something like a file manager. You choose
which files to include in the soon-to-be-created CD-R. The computer
prompts you to insert a blank CD-R into the burner. The writing process
starts. Depending on the amount of data you are writing to the disk, the
process takes about 50 minutes (for a full 650MB on a 2x -speed burner).
Less data, faster burner, these speed up the process: for example, 200MB
on an 8x burner, five minutes. But who's in a hurry? You can set a disk
to be burned in the morning before you shower, another one during dinner,
another while you watch TV... the point is that if you need to make ten
or twenty disks, you can do this pretty easily in a few days with no
disruption of your normal schedule. It is ESPECIALLY important that while
the CD-R is being created, you NOT use your computer for other tasks. Be
sure that all background tasks are stopped as well: screensaver, virus
check, Outlook or mail program, defrag, whatever. These can cause your
computer to "hiccup" and spoil the CD-R write process. You then create a
CD-R that is unreadable and irrecoverable. Such disks are called
"coasters" because afterwards that's all they're good for... and they're
not very good coasters either since they have a big hole in the middle!
But if you're careful , you'll waste very few disks.
That's all there is to it!
regards
Robert Jeantet
