Mac Forum / General / Hardware / February 2006

Coaster?

Cardboard will scratch the CD.  The blank disc is for protection; you
can toss it when you're done with the stack.

There is no real technical reason for having a clear acrylic CD blank at
both ends of the stack.  Consider that paper is a very expensive
material, both to manufacture and to ship.  This is especially true for
paper that is non-abrasive, which would be a requirement.

Why not use a cheap blank of something you *already make* to protect the
media during shipment?  The acrylic blank is light (probably lighter
than a sufficiently robust paper blank), does not have to be out-sourced
(you already make it), and chemically and dimensionally stable (the
blank, like any CD, will generally only touch it's neighbour around the
spindle, and will not compress measurable over weeks or months).

This makes paper or card far from "adequate" by any definition of the word.

It is a pity they make terrible coasters since there is often a little
step around the spindle (on both sides) to make room for the dye and
printing layers.  It never quite sits square on a surface.