Those STI discs have a reputation as being awful junk and, in my opinion, are not worth using even if free. Even the
comments on the Circuit City site itself are mostly very negative, including those from posters who gave the discs high ratings and intended to praise but inadvertently damned:
The ONLY CD-R I'll buy... I have burned 15 VCD's using the STI's and I have been succesful in 15 out of 17 tries. Just handle with care, the silver stuff flakes off eventually (rated the discs 4.5 out of 5)
Great cds, have 1 - 3 error disks in spindle (rated the discs 5 out of 5)
The dye coating is very fragile and tends to flake off at the smallest abrasive contact... Should be ok for backup/long term storage type uses (rated the discs 3 out of 5)
The above comments are from "fans" of this media. Posters who gave low ratings were a little more consistent in matching their ratings to their comments:
Garbage CD-Rs...AVOID THIS JUNK AT ANY PRICE! (rated the discs 1 out of 5)
Run away from this MEDIA! Words can't tell you how poor these CD-R's are! Let alone wait for the rebate! You can do much better (rated the discs 1.5 out of 5)
I don't consider any number of failures per spindle to be acceptable, and I would certainly never put a CD-R known to shed its reflective layer into one of my drives. I'm not fond of cleaning debris from the inside of my drives.
Of course, how much can one trust the people who leave comments on the Circuit City site? In addition to the genius above who intends to burn long-term backups on discs he has personally found to delaminate with the "slightest contact", here's one regarding the Circuit City branded discs:
This is the best CDR discs I have ever had. It works great on my 60x24x72 CD burner!
60x24x70 burner, huh?
Listen up, boys and girls, don't drink and burn...
cfitz
<edit - added the actual scores reported by the users and some comments by those who gave low numeric scores>
In terms of my old college economics class, these discs have negative utility, and the only way I would consider them is if STI/Circuit City paid me (handsomely) to use them... 