Believe it or not, computers were actually created by mankind to make our lives easier. The original aim was not to frustrate us daily with glitches and errors, or to create paranoia due to the scourge of worms or viruses, but to simplify our lives so we could take time to smell the roses.

Fortunately, there are still a few stout-heated souls who have that goal in their sights and continue to create software and hardware that will simplify our daily routines.

The folks at Disc Makers Inc., who have been manufacturing CD and DVD duplication systems for corporate and industrial use, have finally created a useful, time-saving tool for those of uschained to desktop PCs. Dubbed the Pico ($699), this device is designed to sit on your desk and frees you up to do other things as it tackles the task of disc duplication.

Setting it up is rather simple. A small, plastic input bin holds a stack of blank CDs or DVDs and is attached to the front of the unit. Four pillars on the bin can be adjusted to accommodate the size of the discs, which can range from standard CDs to the small "bizcard" discs.

The Disc Forge software that comes with the unit walks you through the duplication process, which basically tells the system where the disc image is stored and then the unit does the rest at a rate of 12 CDs or six DVDs per hour.

A robotic arm lifts the top disc and inserts it into the drive. If it is the disc to be duplicated, it creates a disc image on your hard drive, removes the disc, picks up the next one, which is blank, makes a copy and continues with the process until the job is completed. It even "throws out" what it considers to be bad discs.

You, on the other hand, can go get a second, or third, cup of coffee, read the daily newspaper or, simply, smell the roses.

Other key features include:

• It's extremely easy to set it up. Just pop on the spindle and attach the unit to any USB 2.0 port on your computer.
• It works with any PC running Microsoft 2000 or XP operating systems.
• It can make duplicates from either master discs or a CD image stored on your computer.
• The speed of the disc copying process is directly related to the speed of your computer.
• The company only uses top-of-the-line drives from Plextor and NEC in its systems.

More information on the Pico can be found at www.discmakers.com.

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