The Casio CW-100 is a Thermal Transfer printer. No, it does not print well on all surfaces. As a matter of fact, it performs best on "thermal laquer" surfaces. Amazon has the best price on this printer. Great prices on Taiyo Yuden disks (and a lot of info about the particulars of printing surfaces) can be found at supermediastore.com. It is not the fault of the printer that it does not print well on plain or inkjet surfaces. Inkjet may or may not print on plain surfaces, but prints best on--you guessed it--disks with inkjet printing surfaces. Have used this product for over a year. There are limitations on printing surface, but using a silver thermal laquer disk, even a font size of 6 is sharp and clear. If you are looking for a device for professional graphics, you may want to shell out for a low-end professional quality machine. This is not an industrial product, but outstanding for the home user. You may want to download Free and Easy Font Viewer which will show examples of all fonts on your system (keeps you from so much trial and error in choosing a label font). I do have a question, though--anyone out there know what is the difference in the CW-100 and the CW-100-IH? I have the CW-100, but cannot find any info on the IH version anywhere, even on the Casio site (where it is not listed among their products). Hope this helps.