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By Logan Harbaugh (What's Hot Editor, InformationWeek Magazine) Use a CD-ROM long enough and you will inevitably scratch it - scratch it enough, and it will become unreadable. Then what - send it back to the manufacturer and hope for a replacement? Among the alternatives, the best may be the Wipe Out! CD Repair Kit from Esprit Development. Rather than filling in scratches as some products do, it actually polishes them out. I tried Wipe Out! on a couple of CDs I had around (extras, from a well-known Internet provider), one with wear-and-tear scratches and the other with a couple of deep scratches manufactured with a knife. After shaking the product well, I rubbed the CDs with a drop of the liquid and the supplied cloth. In every case, the scratches disappeared. In some cases, especially with the deep scratches, it took a while, but the disks were readable again. All that remained were some barely visible scratches from the abrasive. At $19.99, I'd recommend it for anyone who has CD-ROMs that get a lot of use, or a collection of music CDs, DVDs, or laser discs. Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc.
Compact discs, CD-ROMs, and DVDs are all marvels of modern technology. We can now actually hold in our hands hours of audio & video, thousands of photographs, and volumes of information that could easily fill a room if produced in paper form. Made up of a thin metallic layer covered in plastic, compact discs store information via a series of grooves arranged in tracks that are burnt into the metal with a precision laser beam. The information can then be read by a compact disc player, which contains a lower power laser that is reflected off of the disc in different intensities depending on the grooves it encounters. In order to get a clear reading, however, the laser must first pass through the plastic coating of the disc. If the plastic gets damaged in any way, it can sometimes make the disc difficult to read or even totally unreadable. Of course, compact discs are touted to be very tough and can stand quite a lot of abuse but (contrary to popular belief) they're not indestructible. Even small scratches in the surface can cause the laser to misread the data. This results in skipping on audio CDs and either garbled information or no information at all on CD-ROMs. Luckily, these scratches can be fixed, and the best product I've seen to date for this purpose is called Wipe Out! from Esprit Development. Yes, there have been many other products claiming to cure compact disc damage but Wipe Out! is unique in that it isn't a wax or filler. Those types of products can cause damage to your CD player or CD-ROM drive by flaking off inside the drive mechanism. Wipe Out, on the other hand, is a polishing compound specifically designed to interact with the plastic coating of a compact disc. Instead of just filling the scratches, Wipe Out actually allows you to buff them out permanently. To work its magic, Wipe Out combines three active ingredients including... "a chemical which evaporates quickly and prepares the surface of the CD by "melting" a micro layer of the CD plastic coating, a microabrasive compound which polishes the disc with your help, and a hard wax in liquid form which suspends all of the chemicals long enough to produce the desired results." To repair a disc, you simply apply a small drop to the scratch on the disc and rub the compound with the included non-abrasive cloth until the scratch disappears. With really large or deep scratches you may have to apply Wipe Out! more than once. After the scratch is gone just clean the disc with water, dry it off, and your ready to rock and roll again. The bottom line is that this product works and it works well. Wipe Out! can save you a lot of money by bringing new life to what you thought were dead audio CDs and CD-ROM applications. Copyright 1997-2001 Scott Garrigus
Here at CD-ROM Online, we've found an amazing new product that will save you from the scratched CD blues. "Wipe Out!" created by the Esprit Development Corp. is the only compound we know of that will actually repair damaged or scratched CD's. We used the Wipe Out! CD Repair Kit on several of our damaged CD's, and like magic, our favorite CD's are back up and running. Just rub it in and you're set. November 1997 © NSI Web Design.
Repairs Scratched CD's Volume I, Issue V December 1997 When I first heard about the Wipe Out! CD Repair Kit, I was a little skeptical. But a pile of "not quite ready to throw out" music and computer CD's next to my desk made me decide to give it a whirl. I called Marc Guest at Esprit who explained to me: "When a Compact Disc gets scratched, most people think it is ruined forever. Nothing could be further from the truth. A scratch on the surface of the CD simply confuses the laser, and causes skipping, or the inability of the player to load the CD It does not damage the digital information stored below the surface of the plastic." This sounded good to me, and as they were willing to donate a kit for us to test, the only one taking a risk, I figured, was them. My first patient was a Jerry Garcia music CD. Let's just say I'm listening to it now as I write this article, and it sounds "good as new." The spots that used to skip and/or jump on me no longer exist, and I'm thrilled at the reclaimed perfection of the sound. Esprit's Wipe Out! Disk Repair System is a polishing compound designed specifically for the CD plastic, which effectively interacts with the polymer, and allows you to polish the scratch out of your disc. Now I take pretty good care of my CD's so I needed a real mess to fully test out this product. For my next patient, I searched in the top drawer where my daughter tends to throw unprotected discs and CD-ROM games. Ahh, there it was, the Scupper the Sailor Dog CD-ROM Game. I know for a fact this game has been useless for quite a while. I cleaned off what looked like jelly from the badly scratched up data side of this CD-ROM, and followed the "easy to follow instructions" included with the kit. Each Kit includes an instruction sheet, a polishing cloth, and has enough Repair Compound to fix between 60 and 80 CD's, CD-ROM's, or DVD's. Immediately, I could notice the difference in the look of the disc, but the real test was in trying to install the program from the newly repaired disc. I'm happy to say that this went flawlessly, and the product and my reclaimed CD game work like champs! If you own a business, or work in the corporate world, you know that many high-end programs can run hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Here is a product that can really save you a lot of headaches. For the price, less than fifty cents per repair, this is a product no computer user should be without. Now, if they would just make a CD glue for all the scratched ones I flung against the wall... Terry Penn Editor, New Jersey WebGuide Magazine
Wipe Out! CD Repair Kit Audio CDs and CD-ROMs are fairly robust - you can badly abuse these silvery discs and they'll continue to deliver. But occasionally one will acquire a severe enough scratch that it becomes unusable. Or so you may think: I recently tried a product from Esprit Development Corp. called the Wipe Out! C.D. Repair Kit that is capable of bringing badly trashed CDs back from the dead. To test this mild abrasive I created a series of deep, squiggly scratches across the surface of an audio CD with the point of a paper clip. To ensure that the CD was completely toasted I added a cross-hatched pattern of scratches to the original scratches. I then attempted to play the audio CD on my Mac. Naturally, it skipped more often than an assembly of second graders. After a couple of applications of Wipe Out! CD Repair, some fairly vigorous rubbing with the included cloth (you're instructed to rub until the scratch disappears), and a rinse and dry, the CD played back flawlessly. Wipe Out! CD Repair costs $19.99 (plus $3.00 shipping and handling). Check it out. Contributed by Chris Breen
from Esprit Development Corporation Bringing scratched CD's back to life You know, it's really a pain when your favorite CD's start to skip from scratches they've endured over time. In the past, it's meant a trip out to the music store to buy a new copy, and use the old copy as a coaster. Wipe Out! helps you bring back those CD's. The kit, which comes in a package the size of a kid's juice box, is very simple. It includes a bottle of micro-abrasive compound, and a polishing cloth. The concept is simple: the micro-abrasive compound is used to polish away any scratches, restoring the CD. It sounded too good to be true, so we put it to the test. We found a CD that had been skipping rather annoyingly, and very consistently. Turning it over, we found the scratch, near the outside edge on the shiny side. When looking for the offending scratch, remember that CDs play from the inside out. We applied a small dab of polish onto the included cloth, and began to rub the area. Very shortly, the scratch seemed to be gone, although the surface of the CD seemed to be a bit hazed, and coated with very fine scratches. This is normal. The CD was popped into the player, and "Eureka!" it worked! No skipping! We tried a few other CDs, with similar results. This stuff really worked. A bottle of this stuff goes for less than twenty bucks, which is what you'd pay for one CD, and it can repair approximately 80 CDs. It more than pays for itself with just one or two saved discs. The compound works by softening the surface of the hard plastic disc, allowing it to be polished more easily. According to the manufacturer, scratches up to 90% of the disc's thickness can be eliminated without affecting the thin metal layer onto which the music data is encoded. For the money, this is a great product, and an easy way to save those favorite CD's from the trash heap. -Leo Soderman
Copyright 1997-2001 - Fi Magazine
- Joe Vallina
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