In Cool Tools land, everything breaks when I’m on a deadline, naturally. When this happens, I’ll usually put the device or hardware or software aside, wait for some answers from the vendor, and then continue the review on another week (because usually I have a Plan B ready).

But this week, Plan B (and C and D) crashed and burned as well, so I’m writing about three or four different devices that fell prey to Murphy’s Law, which for gadget reviewers should be renamed in my honor. So welcome to the first-ever two-part Cool Tools column. This week we’ll talk about what went wrong, and hopefully next week we’ll have solved all of our issues and will present the happy endings for all involved.

The first product to go down in flames was the Dymo DiscPainter. This $280 inkjet printer prints directly on CDs or DVDs and does so in a funky, spinning-wheel fashion that is really a pleasure to watch. When it works, of course.

After hooking the device up via USB to a PC, I took a burned audio CD and attempted to create a brilliant piece of artwork through the DiscPainter. The device went into action and voilà! Out came a printed CD with only the red and yellow portions, no blue. Considering most of my design was blue, something was wrong. Dymo has promised to send me another ink cartridge, hopefully one that can print blue.

Next up was the Primera Bravo SE Blu Disc Publisher, an automated CD/DVD recorder and printer combination device. Having already reviewed an earlier version of this device, Primera still convinced me to try out the latest version, which now supports Blu-Ray DVD copying and printing. With Blu-Ray now the de facto standard in high-definition DVD, companies looking to go high-def with their sales DVDs or other such marketing-type videos can look to this new device for their Blu-Ray needs. The Disc Publisher not only copies DVDs; it also prints them.

The problem I faced, however, was not having an original Blu-Ray DVD (a legal one, at least) to try and make copies of. The device was able to make audio CDs and regular DVDs. We just couldn’t create a Blu-Ray DVD in order to copy because I didn’t have a Blu-Ray DVD burner either.

Switching gears, I decided to try a few home entertainment devices that connect wirelessly through a home network. First was the Digital Spectrum Solutions' 10.4-inch wireless digital frame, which displays photos and stuff in a pretty frame. What’s interesting about this is the ability to wirelessly connect to a network and then download photos through an RSS feed (the FrameChannel service, which supports other digital photo frames as well).