Printers reviews

HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Printer reviews

2008-08-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

Unlike its similarly portable sibling, the Photosmart A526, this midpriced model is fast: The 4-by-6-inch photos we printed came out in less than a minute each; other snapshot printers we've tested have taken almost twice as long. Most colors looked realistic, with good detail except in dark areas. My only gripes: Fleshtones seemed a little orangey, and monochrome photos had a slight pinkish tinge.

Connecting this squat, black machine to a computer requires you to provide your own USB cable (HP doesn't provide one), but the driver, stored in the printer's firmware, automatically installs itself. No computer, no problem: Just insert a media card into one of A636's many slots to start. The printer's 4.8-inch, touch-sensitive color LCD responds to your finger or to a stylus (HP includes one). The backlit navigation icons flanking the central display area are easy to understand, as are the images and messages on screen. The A636 comes with a carrying handle for road trips; a $25 battery is optional.

Printing options include captions, clip art, frames, and effects such as sepia toning and cartooning; you also get simple editing tools. The printer takes an unusually wide range of media sizes, from 4-by-6-inch photos to panoramic (4-by-12-inch) to 5-by-7-inch. The high-yield replacement ink cartridge ($35) lasts for approximately 120 prints, or 29 cents per print. A lower-capacity cartridge ($20) lasts for about 55 prints, or 36 cents per print.

A few of the Photosmart A636's controls perplexed me (for example, lowering the LCD is unusually difficult), but overall it was easy to use. And ultimately, this versatile photo printer made its mark on me: I actually missed it after testing it.

Melissa Riofrio

Canon Pixma MP530 Office All-In-One Inkjet Photo Printer review

2008-08-13T17:52:00.000-07:00

Canon Pixma MP530 Office All-In-One Inkjet Photo Printer from: Canon
The Canon Pixma MP530 is a versatile all-in-one unit combines printing, scanning, faxing, and copying capabilities in one compact, space-saving device that delivers fast, professional results job after job. You can use the MP530 to print both photos and text, copy important papers, fax documents and forms, and scan personal notebooks and photos. Featuring a productive 30-page automatic document feeder that can copy, scan, or fax multiple-page documents, this powerful unit prints up to 29 pages per minute (ppm) in black and white and 19 ppm in color, and delivers a borderless 4-by-6-inch photo in about 51 seconds. Fax at up to 33.6 kbps in color or black and white, store 40 speed-dial codes and enjoy the convenience of the 150-page fax memory that safely stores all incoming faxes if paper or ink runs out. Finally, the built-in scanner offers 1200 x 2400 dot-per-inch (dpi) optical resolution with 48-bit color depth for vibrant images.

Review: HP's OfficeJet J6480 All-in-One Printer

2008-08-12T19:26:00.001-07:00

By Gerry Blackwell
July 24, 2008

More and more big corporations are paying attention to green IT – looking for ways to reduce carbon emissions associated with information technology equipment and operations. Small businesses can and should do their bit, too.

One easy way: choose a product such as Hewlett-Packard’s recent OfficeJet J6480 All-in-One Printer the next time you need to replace an existing printer or add a new one.

The J6480 delivers color photo and document printing, sheet-fed and flat-bed scanning with optical character recognition (OCR), plus faxing and photocopying. It has Wi-Fi wireless connectivity built in. It’s fast, provides good print quality, and it wasn’t too difficult to set up.

Price: An Amazing $169
We know, of course, that printer manufacturers subsidize the cost of hardware in the expectation of making their profit on ink and paper sales. Still, one worries when a product with this much functionality sells at such a low price. Where, you have to wonder, did they cut corners?

HP claims a duty cycle of up to 5,000 pages. That means if you print an average of five pages a day, it should last four years. HP will make its money on ink cartridges, of that you can be sure, but as with some competing models recently, it offers a more cost-effective, high-capacity cartridge option.

The standard HP 74 Black Inkjet Print Cartridge, with which the product ships and that HP sells for $15, supposedly gives you 210 pages. The $30 HP 74XL cartridge gives you 780 pages.

You likely won’t get that many pages from either, of course – print cartridge capacity depends on how much is on each page and other factors – but the XL cartridge clearly delivers better value.

Greener Than Thou
Just how green is the J6480? It’s Energy Star compliant, meaning it meets standards for reduced power consumption (35 watts while printing, 40 while copying), but lots of modern IT equipment is Energy Star certified.

More importantly, the HP product comes with an auto duplexer that lets you print on both sides of the page. The duplexer in effect flips the page over to print on the other side, automatically.

Duplex printing saves paper, which saves costs, but also helps reduce downstream and upstream environmental impacts from pulp and paper production and transportation of paper products, raw materials and finished documents. It also saves trees.

Many big companies now make it a policy to only buy printers with duplex capabilities, and some are configuring them to print on both sides by default.

The J6480 includes a junk fax blocker – you can register phone numbers of known junk faxers, and it won’t answer calls from them – which could reduce unnecessary printing.

HP’s Smart Web Printing, available with most of its printers, is another tool ostensibly designed to reduce unnecessary printing. It’s a utility that helps you select just the pages or parts of pages at a Web site that you need to print, so you avoid getting reams of pages you didn’t want.

Mind you, we can never understand why people want to print Web pages in the first place. The best way to save paper (and printer ink), of course, is to print less.

Set-Up Pain
To find out how easy it would – or wouldn't ‑ be for a typical micro business person to set up the J6480, I assigned the task to my partner, who has virtually no hands-on experience with tech products – other than using them. She reports that it was not terribly difficult, but more time consuming than she would like.

HP printers come with voluminous software bundles, including optional components – such as a complete photo software bundle – that most small businesses don’t need. But unless you know to select the manual or advanced install option, the product will install everything, and especially on older, slower computers, that can take a long time.

The documentation was also a little confusing. The quick set-up guide uses sometimes ambiguous graphics and small-print multi-lingual text.

And the J6480 shipped with a generic wireless set-up guide that appears to suggest you need an optional Wi-Fi dongle to make the wireless functions work – until you realize it’s talking about a completely different model. In fact, wireless is built in to this product. Setting up the J6480 to work wirelessly on other computers after an initial install using a USB cable is relatively simple and quick.

The set-up process was also not very forgiving of operator error. When my assistant accidentally hit the eject button on the CD-ROM drive, aborting the installation, she had to uninstall the partly installed software and start over from scratch.

HP Officejet J6480 All-in-One Printer reviews

2008-08-12T19:18:00.001-07:00

Customer Reviews
Flaws in the software
I had to replace an HP all in one printer and came across the J6480. I liked the features of the printer and it was a bit smaller than my old one. Hooking up the printer was simple, but the software is another issue.

It took an hour to get through the installation (Windows XP) and everything worked well. I was able to scan, fax and print. What was not evident until the next day was I had a problem with printing any type of text document from Word and even notepad(other programs such as excel would print fine.) After hitting a print command it took up to 8 minutes for the print menu to come up then the document would finally print.

I spent 3 hours with technical support (the support rep was wonderful) and we uninstalled my software and reinstalled his and the problem did not go away. His solution was for me to back everything up and reinstall windows….NOT!

My solution is to return the printer to the store if possible. I rely on it for my business. Too bad, I really liked all the other features.

Great All-In-One
Had a 6210. It died. Looking around, checking reviews, all that kind of stuff we do nowadays. I settled on the HP J6480 all-in-one printer. Less than 2 bills and it does all that my old 6210 did and more, for less than I originally paid for the earlier model.

The setup was a breeze (Win XP) Easier than I had hoped for, and the 802.11 works like a charm.

The quality of the printed documents was just fine, and the first couple of photos I printed showed exceptional color balance. Built-in duplexer works like a dream. How come my cars don’t get cheaper as they get better? HP should have a little conversation with GM.

Heard some reports of bloatware. Nah. Less than earlier models. What they give you is pretty tight and lean now, and some of it pretty darned useful. Just go with it. You’ll sleep better at night.

I have no complaints. Inexpensive, reliable, good quality, easy setup. What’s the world coming to? Buy one. You’ll enjoy it.

Five stars.

Great AIO for the money!
I too went through a couple of trials with the software, but now that I figured it out, it has been a pleasure to use. Initially I set it up with a USB connection because I didn’t realize that I would not come back to the first screen that appeared when I opened the CD. I should have just started with choosing the wireless connection (would have saved a little time). If you start with a USB connection, you have to re-open the CD after the initial(USB)set up and go to the add a new device option (this is a new menu that has different options than the initial menu). Even after going through the motions of adding a new device, the software said that it could not find the printer on the network, but the printer printed out a page giving me the OK with a green checkmark and a “no problems found” as well as other info including IP Address. I had to go back in and use the “Find the Printer using IP Address” option (the page that the printer created had the IP address on it, so I used that one). Once I did that, I had no problems. The software found the printer, and I was doing everything via wireless.
This took me all of about an hour to figure out, and had I started with wireless it would have taken less time I’m sure. I am using an HP laptop with XP Professional. I don’t know if this will work with Vista.
I am now loving this AIO!!

HP Wireless DeskJet 450wbt printer reviews

2008-08-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

The good: Excellent photo print quality; includes Bluetooth card; portable; includes rechargeable battery.

The bad: Fairly expensive; mediocre text-print quality; slow print speeds.

The bottom line: The HP Deskjet 450wbt offers full-size prints, excellent photo quality, portability, and wireless Bluetooth and IR printing, making it a good buy for businesspeople on the road a lot.

Specs: Printer Type: Personal printer - Ink-jet - Color; Max media size: Legal (8.5 in x 14 in), A4 (8.25 in x 11.7 in); Connectivity technology: Wired, Wireless

Reviewed by: Kristina Blachere
Reviewed on: 02/26/2004 Released on: 10/01/2003 If you're constantly on the go for business, then you'll need a printer to take with you. With the HP Deskjet 450wbt, HP has repackaged its popular Deskjet 450cbi to include the often hard-to-obtain Bluetooth card so that you can print from wireless Bluetooth devices. In addition to wireless Bluetooth capabilities, the 450wbt comes equipped with infrared capabilities so that you can print from your PDA, plus a battery and a parallel print cable. However, this four-ink inkjet printer lacks robust print speeds, decent text-print quality, and the ability to print without an attached computer--features you will find included with the similar Canon i80. But if cost is no option and you want the hands-down best customer-service warranty in the business, the HP Deskjet 450wbt makes sense for you. Measuring a slim 13.3 inches by 3.2 inches by 6.5 inches (W, H, D), the HP Deskjet 450wbt, like the Canon i80, is a very compact printer designed to print full-size 8.5x11 documents. The input tray snaps into the body, and the output guide retracts so that the printer will fit snugly into your briefcase or luggage. Even with the battery installed, the 450wbt weighs only 4.6 pounds.

The 450wbt supports both parallel and USB connections through ports located along the back. Oddly, HP includes a parallel cable in the box, but you'll have to buy the more popular USB cable yourself. The 450wbt comes with a preinstalled Bluetooth wireless card, but if you remove the Bluetooth card, the open slot in back supports CompactFlash cards (Types I and II), provided the images are stored in Digital Print Order format (DPOF is a digital standard created in 2000 by Canon, Eastman Kodak, and Matsushita Electric). An infrared port located on the printer's front panel makes it easy to beam your PDA-created document (Palm OS or Pocket PC) directly to the printer.

If you travel a lot, you'll want the optional carrying case ($59-$99) and the AC car adapter ($77). Both are available from HP's Web site. It is standard to offer these options separately. The HP Deskjet 450wbt's best features are its included battery and various wireless capabilities, both of which cost extra on the Canon i80. Beyond the battery and the wireless features, the HP Deskjet 450wbt continues printing with only one of its two ink cartridges still working, and HP provides a plastic ink-cartridge case to avoid spillage while traveling. Another sweet touch is a small plastic sleeve hidden on the bottom of the printer to hold your business card. Think of it as the working person's equivalent of having name tags sewn into clothing.

The Deskjet 450wbt's included software is rudimentary: HP Photo Printing Software allows you to create and print photo-album pages; BT Print sets up Bluetooth printing; HP Mobile Printing for Pocket PCs sets up infrared printing; and you get online access to MyPrintMileage, a Web-based program that keeps track of how much ink you use and suggests when to order new cartridges. The print driver software covers only the basics, such as paper type, print quality, brightness and saturation, and various maintenance tasks, including print-head cleaning and color calibration. The interface is simple and easy to use. While the HP Deskjet 450wbt created excellent color prints in CNET Labs' tests, the Canon i80 performed significantly faster and delivered slightly better print quality overall. The 450wbt text print speeds averaged a slow 1.48 pages per minute (ppm), which compared poorly to the i80's zippy 5.6ppm. With color photos, the 450wbt took 4.07 minutes to print our 8.5x11 test photo, whereas the i80 took a mere 2.8 minutes per page, or about half the time.

The 450wbt's text printing, even on coated inkjet paper, was a disappointment. Our CNET Labs' test document looked oversaturated, with blurry letters. Because this printer is a Deskjet, designed for businesspeople on the go, rather than part of HP's Photosmart line, the 450wbt really should print crisper text. Color graphics, while better, showed visible banding and dithering, and the colors in our test document looked faded.

The Deskjet 450wbt's strong suit is printing photos. It did an excellent job with our tricky, high-resolution, 8.5x11 test photo, producing smooth and natural-looking skin tones, vibrant colors, and no visible dithering (meaning you couldn't see any of the ink dots). We did, however, notice some faint banding in the backgrounds.

In CNET Labs' tests, the 450wbt's ink costs were average. It printed 55 copies of our 8.5x11 test photo before running out of ink, which works out to $1 per page. If you print mostly 4x6 photos, your costs will run about half that, around 50 cents per print.

CANON PIXMA MP610 printer review

2008-08-11T17:52:00.000-07:00

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Company: Onkyo
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Onkyo TX-8522 100 technologist Stereo Receiver

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HP Photosmart C4480 All-In-One Printer review

2008-08-10T18:41:00.000-07:00

Reviewed by: Josh Norem
Review Date: August 2008
HP's Photosmart C4480 All-In-One is a fine multifunction inkjet that is easy to use and pumps out great-looking photos and crisp text. It can print, copy, and scan) with equal aplomb (but not fax, making it a surprisingly well-rounded printer with just a few small flaws.

Even though it's an all-in-one printer, the C4480 is geared toward photo printing, with a multiformat media-card reader on its face plate. You don't need a PC to print from the media slots—you can just stick a card in and use the integrated 1.5-inch LCD to help you print your pictures. The display also lets you start a scan or copy job.

The C4480 is capable of producing high-quality 4,800x1,200dpi prints, and when we first printed some test images with the stock tanks, we were very impressed by the color accuracy, saturation, and overall quality. Prints were a bit dark, but they still looked very good, with rich, bold colors. They looked even better with HP's special "photo" cartridge, designed for those who print a lot of snapshots. The $24.99 cartridge both enhances print quality and lets you save your regular black ink tank for text jobs.

Text reproduction, meanwhile, was equally rich, jumping off the page. It's not quite as sharp as what a laser printer can output, but it's much richer, and text looks dark and bold.

Scanning (either to PC or to a print) and copying are also simple and elegant; simply press the buttons on the unit's face plate. The scanning engine runs at 1,200 dots per inch (dpi) and produced good results in our tests. Scanning a document took about 25 seconds, then another 25 seconds to print it. If you opt for saving it to a file, it shows up under "My Scans" as soon as scanning finishes.

Still, we had some issues with the C4480. The printer comes with two stingy introductory tanks, with the black tank rated for just 190 pages and the color tank just 150. Fortunately, replacement tanks are more reasonable. A black tank costs $14.99, with a cost per page of 8 cents; a color tank will run you $17.99, boosting the cost to 12 cents per page. These prices are a bit on the high side, but the tanks are rather inexpensive, so it balances out a little bit. HP sells high-yield tanks for $29.99 (black) and $34.99 (color). These tanks lower costs to a more wallet-friendly 4 cents per page for black and 6 cents per page for color.

A more serious concern is print speed. HP's claim of 23 pages per minute (ppm) color and 30ppm black is pure fantasy. Our 10-page mixed document of text, photos, and graphs took 2 minutes and 49 seconds, and our 20-page text file took an agonizing 4 minutes and 48 minutes. HP claims you can print a 4x6 photo in just 25 seconds, but our time of 49 seconds was almost double that. An 8x10 took 2 minutes and 44 seconds, which is also slow. We tried printing our mixed document in "fast draft" mode, and though it was certainly much faster at just 52 seconds, it's still not even close to achieving 23ppm. One tradeoff for the slow print speeds is that the printer is very quiet in normal (non-draft) mode.

We also had problems with the included software. If you're printing from a PC, HP provides a do-it-all program called the HP Solution Center that helps you administer tasks and check on ink levels. We like the Solution Center, but we wish HP's photo-printing software was integrated into it. The program, Photosmart Essential, was unwieldy—to print, we had to import photos into it; even worse, it accepts only one folder at a time, so printing photos from separate folders required us to import each folder separately, which is a time-consuming annoyance. Finally, the C4480 doesn't include a USB cable, nor does it provide any networking features, so you'll have to attach it to a local PC if you want to share it on a network. (If wireless is a must-have feature for you, HP's Photosmart C4385 is very similar to the C4480 but includes Wi-Fi connectivity and costs about $30 more.)

The C4480 has a few flaws, but none of them are deal-breakers. We wish it printed faster, and that it had wireless connectivity options and an easier wizard for photo printing. Nonetheless, we can recommend the unit to those looking for a multifunction printer that delivers great photo output.

HP LaserJet 2420-DN Network Laser Printer Review

2008-08-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

A good quality laser printer is still an essential for any office where printing is required. Today's inkjet printers can easily match laser printers in terms of text quality, crispness, and even speed, but no inkjet can compare to even a low-end laser printer in that most important of benchmarks, price. Laser printers have considerably lower CPP (Cost Per Page) values due to their large reservoirs of toner and more efficient printing process.

Here at PCstats, we consider business computing equipment to be as important as the latest 'enthusiast' computer gear when it comes to reviews. We work in an office ourselves, and we know how difficult it can be to find reliable unbiased information in the less-than-sexy area of reliable business equipment. We've taken a look at several laser printers over the last few months, and today we're pleased to have another one in-house.

The Hewlett-Packard Laserjet 2420dn model that we're looking at is a networked monochrome laser printer with a 1200x1200 maximum resolution, 64MB of onboard memory (expandable to 320MB), 350 sheet paper capacity, a built-in HP JetDirect Ethernet print server, automatic duplex printing and a price tag of about CAN$1049 (US$899).

For a non-home office, a networked laser printer should be considered a requirement. While technically any printer can be networked by installing it on a networked system and sharing it, the actual process of doing this can be cumbersome and inefficient for more than a few PCs.

For one thing, having a PC between the printer and the rest of the network adds an extra layer of complexity and potential hardware failure.

For another thing, unless you have a fast PC which you can afford to use as a dedicated print server, whoever uses the PC attached to the printer is going to be constantly interrupted with printer issues as well as suffering slower performance from the overhead that print serving imposes.

It is far better to pay the small premium and get a printer with networking properties. These devices have a built in network adaptor, allowing computers on your network to communicate directly with the printer and making printer sharing unnecessary. Printers like the HP 2420DN take that one step further by incorporating a full networked print server.

Canon PIXMA MP800R Printer Features and Canon PIXMA MP800R Printer reviews

2008-08-10T18:21:00.000-07:00

Canon PIXMA MP800 AIO printer

Reviewed by: rmwitt03, Jan 9, 2006

Strengths: large viewscreen, slide & negative adapters, duplexer, dual paper path, print and scan quality

Weaknesses: flimsy paper tray, large footprint, not network capable

Summary: GREAT PRINTER! I looked at a variety of printers, but narrowed it down to either this one, the Epson RX620/700 or the HP 3310. Really wanted wireless connectivity, but discovered that NONE of the wireless (either integral or print server) will work with scan capability. For the money, the Canon was my final answer.

PRINT & SCAN QUALITY - Exceptional! Canon print quality is common knowledge, and this printer is no exception. IMHO, this beats out the RX620 and HP printers. However, this costs more than the RX620. If cost is a factor, you might take a look at the MP500. It has the same print quality, but the scan quality is a little bit less and it doesn't have the slide & negative adapters. I have a lot of old slides from my days with a 35mm, and want to be able to digitize them, so this was another selling point for the MP800.

DUAL-PAPER PATH - while the lower paper tray seems rather flimsy, I don't expect to be using it regularly. I will load the lower tray with photo paper, thus I won't have to switch paper back and forth, I'll just have to select the lower tray when I want to print pictures. Nifty!

DUPLEXER - I had this feature with an old HP printer I had and loved it. While it's easy enough to duplex manually, it's a nice feature to have to do automatic double-sided printing. Time will tell whether this function jams the paper regularly, which was a major drawback with my old HP.

The printer is big and bulky, which is a bit of a disappointment. The next model up from Canon has a sleeker appearance, but is still quite big. Didn't think it was worth the extra $$. My biggest complaint is that the printer doesn't have an Ethernet connection for networks. On top of that, to use the printer wirelessly with my laptop, the BU-20 Bluetooth adapter is grossly expensive.

All in all, great photo and text printing and copying for a good mid-range price. Canon ink cartridges are reasonably priced (as opposed to HP). The control panel is clean, though I wish it didn't stick out so far.

Canon MP800 Multi-Function Printer

Reviewed by: drpepper1, Oct 10, 2006

Strengths: Excellent photo quality, film/slide adapters, big color viewscreen, very stylish

Weaknesses: Large footprint, no fax capability, gets dirty easily, fairly long warm-up time

Summary: Overall, the Canon MP800 multi-function printer is great. Printed photos look excellent and this printer is able to scan slides and film with the included adapters. The printer is also capable of scanning documents at 2400 dpi and copying documents. A memory card slot accepts CompactFlash, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Microdrive, MultiMedia Card (MMC), SD Card, and SmartMedia. This allows you to print directly from the memory card.

The copier has numerous settings, such as quantity of copies, magnification, copy in color or black/white, and the ability to reduce the copy to fit 2 or 4 pages onto a single piece of paper. It is very easy to use, thanks to the numerous buttons on the printer and the easy to read, large color viewscreen.

The scanner works very well. One of the main reasons that I bought this printer was because of its ability to scan slides and film, which I am digitizing. The slide and film adapters are conveniently stored in the scanner’s lid. You can also scan documents and save them as PDFs, which I like. You don’t need any PDF software to do this.

This printer looks really nice. It is black glossy plastic (you can see your reflection in it) and a matte silver. Unfortunately, the black plastic attracts dust very easily, so it needs a lot of dusting if you like things clean. The printer takes about 30 seconds to warm up from being off, which is a bit long. Also, the rear paper tray is plastic and telescopes in to the printer when not used. This paper tray feels cheap and I make sure that I am careful when opening and closing it, as it seems like it could be easy to break. Regardless of these minor annoyances, though, I would highly recommend this printer.

Canon Selphy CP510 photo printer review

2008-08-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

The Propaganda

The Canon Selphy CP510 sits in the middle of their compact photo printer range. It's supposed to offer the best value printing in the range, at 22p a print. Being a dye-sublimation printer, it feeds the photo through several times as it layers the colours (in fact, half the fun is seeing your photo emerge yellow, then red, then.. no? Not for you?). It supports Pictbridge, as well as having a USB connector should you want to print from your computer.

The Good

Setting up the printer is easy, despite the fact that it comes with an instruction book thicker than War and Peace due to it being translated into everything from Finnish to Klingon. When it comes to connecting the camera, Canon cameras are predictably simple, as they fit with the neat retractable Mini USB cable that emerges from inside the printer. Canon IXUS Wireless cameras also come with a dongle to do away with the need for wires altogether, although this isn't an option you can buy with the printer.

Printing time is approximately 60 seconds per photo - much faster than many competitors. And the print quality itself is good, with colours showing up vividly and outlines, for the most part, sharp.

The Bad

The bad stuff is basically regarding all the things the CP510 is missing. There's no screen for previewing or manipulating your photos before printing and no card slots whatsoever, making it via cable or bust (no good if your cable is languishing somewhere in the rats nest you've created under your desk). The Mini USB cable provided won't fit many cameras, including Sony and Fuji. It also only comes with 5 pieces of printing paper, and I can imagine many an excited customer has got home, only have to make some very hard choices on which five photos deserve the printing honour. For the most part, these features are available on the higher spec models in the range, as this is their budget £50 model.

The Truth

It all depends on the value of speed. If any longer than 60 seconds per print is going to drive you insane, this is the printer for you. But, compared to competitors, the Selphy CP510 doesn't shine. For instance, the Epson PictureMate 100 costs the same, but comes with a preview screen, 12 different memory card slots and a number of options for adjusting your photo before print. A fairly obvious choice then...

Canon Pixma MP500 Photo All-In-One Printer Review

2008-08-10T18:12:00.001-07:00

Review by Manila Bulletin
Manila Bulletin reviews Canon Pixma MP500 Photo All-in-One Printer and the author concludes that when she first saw Canon’s newest All-In-One (AIO) printer, she went head-over-heels for her. Among all the printers the writer has reviewed, the Canon PIXMA MP500 Photo All-In-One printer can be considered as the ultimate printer for the minimalist.

The excerpt of the review as follow. As the page has been removed, I publishes the whole article here.

The Canon PIXMA MP500 Photo AIO printer is based on the inkjet technology of Canon. Very versatile and multi-function, this color printer has many features that can give a seductive temptation to replace your old printer with this baby.

At first impression, the printer is quite a bit bulky, but with a dimension of 448 x 426 x 205 millimeters (W x D x H) and weighs only 9.6 kilograms, it’s very light to move it around your humble home or your workplace without too much effort. However, if the need arises to the occasion, it can be stored away in a cupboard or closet when not in use and a user can just take it out when needed.

As we got it on with the review, the software installation was the first to be done. The CD-ROM for the quick start installation guide of the MP500 is very well thought out and quite-user friendly. To tell, setting up the printer on this writer’s desk was simple and user-friendly. More so, you can have an option to download the software for free on the Canon’s official website. Ahh, Canon does make wonders!

Also, Canon was generous enough to include several sample sets of Canon 4 x 6 Photo Paper Plus Glossy and an additional set of ink cartridges for us to maximize the printer review. And we all of us in Technews did. Okay, let’s go on with the review.

The Canon PIXMA MP500 has a large 2.5 inch Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) viewer screen that makes navigation and previewing photos a simple task, thus evaluating images in beautiful, full color and making enhancements before printing them.

The amazing thing about this wonderful printer is that it delivers a great resolution to a minimum of 600 x 600 dpi for black and white (BW) and a whooping 9600 x 2400 dpi for color, that showed remarkable detail and clarity in printouts.

You are maybe asking how the printer does it. Well, it has Canon’s Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering (FINE) technology that uses a next-generation 1,856-nozzle print head that ejects precise, consistent droplets as small as 1 picoliter. With this, the resulting printed photos are smoother and virtually grain-free image.

In addition to that, the Canon ChromaLife100 system combines the PIXMA MP500 Photo All-In-One’s FINE print head technology and newly developed inks with selected Canon photo papers, with great results rivaling that of many conventional photos.

Furthermore, the Canon PIXMA MP500 has a unique ContrastPLUS 5-color ink system - four dye-based inks (CMYK) and a pigment-based black ink - that produces true-life photos with a wide color palette, along with laser-quality text.

Technews was lucky enough that Canon gave us an additional set of five toner ink cartridges aside from the cartridge set that’s already loaded in the printer. We find the ink cartridges very cost-effective because we only needed to replace them as each color runs out, instead of having the whole set replaced each time one cartridge get low on ink. Looks like the competition are going to make a run for their money with this.

We tested the Canon PIXMA MP500 capabilities and Technews was very much impressed. Monochrome printing speed is 30 ppms, color printout speed is 20 ppms, and more importantly, printing a beautiful photo lab quality 4″x 6″ borderless photo takes only 50 seconds. One of the features we love most of this baby is that you can print photos without a PC or laptop using the Direct Printing feature of the MP500. This printer is almost so quiet during printing that the noise can be barely heard.

The MP500 can support, handle and print directly from most types of memory cards including Compact Flash (CF), Microdrive, Smart Media, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Secure Digital (SD), MultiMedia Card (MMC), xD Picture Card, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Duo Pro, and miniSD. A user with a digital camera can also print photos using the MP500 using PictBridge (sold separately for the MP500).

Have a mobile phone that has Infrared (IrDA) and Bluetooth? The Canon PIXMA MP500 has these wireless connectivity features. When using the IrDA, images and photos taken and saved on your mobile phone can be sent and printed directly through the MP500. The printer automatically prints the photo using the 4 x 6 inch photo paper. As for the Bluetooth, you need to have a Bluetooth receiver (sold separately) for connectivity between your mobile phone and the printer.

Another feature of the Canon PIXMA MP500 that we took notice is direct label printing on DVDs and CDs. The MP500 has a CD-R tray which allows the printing of images onto printable DVD/CDs. This is a great feature if you’re burning your photos or music to CD to give out to friends or family as gifts. Hmm, looks like the boys and girls from section “P” (piracy) are sure going to take note of this feature.

Aside from these, including A4, legal, and photo paper, the MP500 can print using most media types. Adding to that, it can also print on envelopes, transparencies, photo stickers, semi-gloss photo paper, and matte photo paper. The maximum capacity of paper that be loaded in its trays is 300 sheets.

The Canon PIXMA MP500 has advanced paper handling features that provide several smart options, including Duplex Printing. The dual paper path allows you to keep photo paper stored in one tray and plain paper in the other - so you can print photos or documents without having to switch paper. You can even print 2 sided reports, saving paper.

As for the MP500 flatbed scanner, it has an Auto Exposure (AE) Copy feature that automatically optimizes reproduction quality based on the type of the original media that a user is duplicating. When scanning photos or graphics, you’ll see high-quality 1200-dpi (maximum) reproduction with vibrant 48-bit color depth. The maximum scanner resolution for the MP500 is 1200 x 2400 dpi.

The MP500, being a multifunction device, a user can take “old fashioned” film prints and scan them in for manipulation or for e-mail. But take note, the MP500 is a feed scanner, so it can only take one print/sheet at a time.

The copy function is also very simple to use and has some great functionality. We tested it by copying a 4 x 6-inch photo we wanted to print in A4. Although it took about 3-5 minutes to complete, the results were very good and the pixilation on the page was minimal. We were also able to copy some pertinent documents and when it came out, they were all like carbon copies of the original thing. Does the place Recto, Manila ring a bell?

The printer is compatible with operating system (OS) system requirements that includes Windows 98/2000/Me/XP and Mac OS.X (10.2.4 or later).

Gotta tell, the Canon PIXMA MP500 Photo All-In-One Printer is easy to use and a good buy if you want to do a variety of things such as make cards, print different photo sizes for frames or print labels onto CDs and DVDs.

Overall the MP500 is very simple to install and get started with printing out your memories. If you’re after something easy to use and yet functional and adaptable to allow you to do a variety of things such as make cards, print different photo sizes for frames, print onto CD/DVD and print straight from your camera, Technews highly recommends this printer.

Surely, you’re going to fall in love with this babe!

HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer Specifications Reviews For Monochrome Network Printer In Lotus Systems

2008-08-10T17:58:00.000-07:00

HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer prints text, images, and graphics smoothly with the 266MHz processor and 8MB of memory. HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer works really fast as it prints at a speed of up to 19 pages per minute. HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer economizes on the use if time. The first page emerges in less than 8 seconds. It gives you the offer to work wireless.

You can put the printer anywhere in the wireless network environment; data travels at up to 54 Mbps across up to 100' (30.5 m). There is a light on the control panel ensuring that you are connected wirelessly. HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer automatically adjusts the optimal print quality with HP's Smart printing technology. It can print complex documents without problems via the Hi-Speed USB 2.0 connectivity.

It can save space with the compact design suitable for desk, shelf, or other convenient spot. The printer can load different types of media in the 250-sheet input tray and 10-sheet priority input tray. HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer prints on a variety of media like plain paper up to legal size, envelopes, transparencies, card stock, postcards, vellum, rough paper, and labels. It can manage remotely with the HP embedded Web server. At the same time, it prints securely with the Wi-Fi protected access via WPA pre-shared key.

With this, you have facility of toner replacement from HP SureSupply, which enables you to receive alerts when a cartridge is low for it monitors for its remaining life. You can also thereby enjoy easy online ordering or check stock and prices at nearby stores for HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer. For the promotion of HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer, HP presents exclusive offers and rewards discounts on HP ink, toner, and paper. You will be given the privilege to shop from a list of customized printing supplies and get free next-day shipping with its My Print Rewards program.

HP provides award-recognized after sales support. You will get peace of mind with the one-year limited warranty with HP's renowned Total Care service and support. It has been recognized as consistently providing An Outstanding Customer Service Experience by J.D. Power and Associates. You can also rely on printing excellence. PC Magazine has designated HP as a Reader's Choice for 14 years in a row. There is a 24x7 toll free number that provides you answers to all your queries.

For getting after sales product supports for HP Laserjet 1022nw Printer, you will have to choose your operating system from among Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows Vista (64-bit), Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows ME, Microsoft Windows 98, Mac OS X and Linux. You can register yourself with HP and will get several helps and after sale services for the product.

Lexmark Z1420 Inkjet Printer review

2008-08-09T17:25:00.000-07:00

Reviewed by: Denny Atkin
Review Date: June 2007
The Lexmark Z1420 is one of the least-expensive printers we've seen with built-in wireless networking, and it offers performance and print quality on a level with wired printers that cost the same amount.

The included drivers for both Windows and Mac make the setup routine novice-friendly. As you install the driver, the installation wizard walks you through assembling and connecting the printer; it will also guide you through configuring Wi-Fi if you plan to use the feature. And Lexmark's printing utility is excellent, with a wizard-driven menu that will automatically adjust quality and paper-size settings for operations like printing an envelope.

A light on the front of the printer verifies your Wi-Fi connection. The Z1420 supports Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), and WPA2 wireless encryption. Ironically for a wireless printer, the Z1420 is one of the few printers to actually include a USB cable in the box.

The printer has a boxy, off-white design that looks reasonably stylish on your desk. It's also very light—so much so that it feels flimsy. Lexmark says its Accu-feed technology virtually eliminates paper jams. In practice, it worked well; in our tests, we never had any sheets misfeed, even when we intentionally misaligned some when loading paper.

Print quality was generally excellent on a variety of paper types. Both color and monochrome text was crisp and highly readable, even at tiny point sizes. Color photos looked great on glossy photo paper; we noted no visible dithering, and colors, including skin tones, looked natural despite the printer using just four ink colors. (Lexmark offers an optional photo cartridge, which replaces the black cartridge, if you want to further improve the quality of photo prints.) When printing in standard mode on plain paper, photos didn't hold up as well, with visible dithering evident in lighter areas.

Text print speed isn't bad for an entry-level printer, though color photo prints are slow. Lexmark claims speeds up to 24 pages per minute (ppm) in monochrome and 18ppm for color, but those are best-case scenarios in draft mode. In normal mode, a 10-page, single-spaced monochrome document took 1 minute and 17 seconds to print. A more elaborate three-page printout, which included color text and a half-page photo, took 1 minute and 22 seconds. A full-page, 8.5x11 photo took 6 minutes and 10 seconds at best quality; a 4x6 photo took 1 minute and 48 seconds. We saw little difference in printer speed whether using the USB or 802.11g Wi-Fi interface.

For this printer, Lexmark offers standard ink cartridges, as well as slightly costlier high-yield ones. The company rates its $29.99 high-yield color ink cartridge for 500 pages (a reasonable 6 cents per page); you'll obviously get nowhere near that many pages if you often print full-page photos. The $24.99 high-yield black cartridge is rated at 500 sheets (5 cents per page). The standard cartridges cost nearly as much, yet Lexmark rates them for just 185 to 215 pages. Clearly, the high-yield cartridges are the smart-money choice.

With the Lexmark Z1420, you don't have to sacrifice quality to get the flexibility of wireless printing at a low price. Just be sure to opt for its high-yield ink cartridges, or you'll pay a lot extra for ink over time.

Canon Pixma iP90v Wireless Mobile Printer

2008-08-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

The good: Text quality has improved over the last version; very compact design makes it easy to carry with you; ink-saving modes can save you in a pinch; PictBridge- and IrDA-enabled.

The bad: The printer is expensive, and add-ons such as battery packs make it moreso; photo print speed is slower than that of the older model.

The bottom line: The Canon Pixma iP90v is the Vista-enabled version of the older Pixma iP90 and offers nearly the same print speeds and quality. It's a very useful printer if you travel a lot and need to print often, but consider the purchase carefully because it's quite expensive.

Specs: Printer Type: Photo printer - Ink-jet - Color; Max media size: Legal (8.5 in x 14 in); Connectivity technology: Wired, Wireless

Wireless printer review: Lexmark 1400

2008-08-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

Posted by Becky McCray at 11:28 AM
The Product: Lexmark 1400 series wireless printer

Short and Sweet Review: It works, without wires!

Who should use it: Small businesses with existing wireless networks.

Mike Phan with Rocket XL sent it to me for a review. I set it up in my home office, where I have a simple wireless network. Setup was as easy as any other recent printer I've purchased.

A few points caught my attention.

Single use ink cartridges
The ink cartridges are licensed for one use only. This is marked on the cartridge, as well as mentioned in the installation process. Good news: they include pre-paid return mailers.

Power cord
The power cord is a bit unusual. There is one cord from the wall to the little transformer box, then instead of another cord from there to the printer, the transformer plugs into the back of the printer.

Auto Alignment
I've had printers before that auto align, but my last several HP All-in-One's didn't. I forgot that I really like that!

Wireless is Nice
I did need to use a USB cable (included in the box!) to do the initial setup. After that, I unplugged the cable, and it works perfectly wireless-ly. I love printing from my laptop, from anywhere on the network, and now I'm contemplating where it makes the most sense to setup the printer. Anywhere there is power and it can get signal, it will work.

This printer would be a good fit for small or home businesses that have a wireless network. The flexibility of placing the printer anywhere is a valuable feature.

Review: HP OfficeJet J4680 All-in-One Printer

2008-08-08T23:29:00.000-07:00

For $130, you might not be surprised to find print, scan, and copy capabilities in HP’s OfficeJet J4680 multifunction ink-jet printer. But the J460 also has a built-in fax machine, wireless connectivity, and a 20-sheet auto document feeder. HP boasts about the J4680’s 20-page-per-minute black-and-white print speeds and 17-page-per-minute color print speeds, but in our real-world tests, the printer proved to be something of a slowpoke.

Setting up the printer was easy enough: just attach the included USB and power cables, install the software and print cartridges, and you’re ready to go. There were also a couple of cool setup features I hadn’t seen before in an HP multifunction device. First, when running the software installer, you’re asked if you want to install HP’s Inkjet Utility Widget, which runs in OS X’s Dashboard. The widget gives you a quick glimpse of your ink supply and allows you to launch the standard HP printer maintenance utility software. Second, after you install the print cartridges, the printer asks to insert a sheet of paper so that it can print out an alignment page. In itself, this isn’t unusual, but many printers require you to analyze this test output yourself, choosing which bars line up best and then using the printer’s on-board menus to input that info. With the J4680, you simply lay the printed sheet on the scanner bed and press OK. The scanner reads the sheet and makes any necessary adjustments.

The J4680 uses two ink cartridges, one black and one tri-color (cyan, magenta, and yellow), that claim to yield 200 and 360 prints, respectively. Replacement cartridges cost $15 for the black and $25 for the tri-color. HP also sells a high-yield black print cartridge; at $28, it costs a little less than two standard-yield black cartridges, and promises to print 700 pages before running out of ink. Unlike some HP printers, the J4680 doesn’t offer support for a photo color ink cartridge.

It was easy to set up the J4680 to connect to the office wireless network. The printer showed up as a Bonjour printer automatically, and you can join individual wireless networks via HP’s Control Center software on your Mac. That sure beats configuring the device using the printer’s on-board menus and controls, like I’ve had to do with other multifunction printers. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that push scanning from the J4680 to my MacBook over an Airport network worked seamlessly as well, as many printers we’ve tested in the past either skip support for network scanning or offer it via some tedious workaround.

We printed a wide variety of test pages on the J4680 and found the prints to be of good quality. Prints of our standard Photoshop test files were a little over-saturated, and a bit too red all around. The J4680 doesn’t provide an ICC color profile, so you’re better off letting the printer handle the color management. The four-color printer also lacked the smooth, continuous tone you might find from a six-ink photo printer, but the results were acceptable. Text, when printed in Normal or Best modes on plain paper, earned a Good rating. Text was clean, with sharp letters legible at even very small point sizes; but when text was printed with a colored background, there was a tendency for bleeding that looked messy.

Print times were slow. It took 19 seconds to print a 1-page black-and-white Microsoft Word document; 1 minute and 47 seconds for a 10-page text document; over 4 minutes for our Photoshop test file; and a whopping 22 minutes to print our 4-page PDF document at Best quality (not the higher Maximum DPI mode also available) on plain paper.

The J4680 also features a 1,200-dpi, letter-sized flatbed scanner. It can produce 48-bit scans, but only after you find and enable that feature deep in the HP scanning software’s preferences. That’s my biggest complaint about the scanning software: most settings are hidden up in the menu bar pull-downs, requiring a search for the proper controls to customize your scan. Once I figured out the software, I was able to get good quality scans that were color accurate with lots of detail. I was able to scan into Photoshop CS3, as well as directly from HP’s scanning software. You can choose to scan a document to OCR in TextEdit, scan to PDF, scan to e-mail, or scan to file.

I tested the copier with a variety of documents, from photos to magazine covers to text documents. The copies of photos had a slight yellow tint, but the magazine cover looked very good. A copy of a grayscale test page was a little light but maintained a good amount of detail. You can place the original either on the scanner’s flatbed or in the automatic document feeder, which can hold up to 20 sheets of paper. It took about 4 minutes to copy a 10-page black-and-white Word document. The J4680 doesn’t offer two-sided printing or scanning.

The J4680 also features a built-in fax machine that worked as advertised, and the included automatic document feeder takes the hassle out of sending multi-page faxes.

Epson Stylus R2400 Review

2008-08-08T23:26:00.001-07:00

Background
The Epson Stylus R2400 is a premier quality printer. It costs a pretty penny, but that’s reflected in the quality of output you can expect, and the sheer functionality that comes with this market leading model. The award-winning unit prints in superior quality across both black and color printing objects, and is ideal for both photographic printing and high detailed image reproduction. And it’s no so bad for business printing either, churning out high quality, lightning fast letters and memos for professional use when it’s not tied up in vivid color reproduction. If you can afford it, this is the model that will make quality printing from home a reality.

Key Features
The most important feature of the R2400 is obviously its ability to print images and photos. The R2400 is specifically designed as a photo printer, which is easy to forget when you see just how impressive it can be in daily print jobs. Using 8 photo color inks and professionally adjusted gradient for smoother reproduction, the R2400 is one of the highest quality inkjet printers available on the market, definitely within this price range. And unlike some of its competitors, replacement ink cartridges can be bought relatively cheaply and are easy to find online and in store.
Additionally for the art student or graphic artist, this printer can handle up to A3 sized paper in exceptional quality, which makes it much sought after in the industry along with its unparalleled print quality. That means for projects or concept presentations, the R2400 can handle all your needs in both color and black with clear cut quality and strong responsiveness to tone and color differentials.

Choose The Epson R2400 If…
If you are an artistic or creative professional that demands high quality image reproduction and quality photo prints. Ideal for professional photographers or designers, or those looking to be able to print off superior quality in both black and color for business reasons.

Not For You If…
You only use your printer occasionally or for home use. This is a serious printer for those with serious printing needs. Unless you want to start printing industry-leading logo concepts or graphic designs, you’d be as well saving your money and leaving this one to the professionals and the heavy print users. There are several other photo printers further down the Epson Photo range which would be more than adequate to provide for the occasional or infrequent printer.

Conclusions
The Epson Stylus R2400 is more than just a printer. Unless you are passionate about photography or graphics and work within the industry, it’s probably going to be hard to justify forking out on this one for a few photos here and there. However for those that are prepared to make use of their printer, such as professional photographers or graphic artists, this printer might just be the solution to your printing needs - quick, quality and intense color reproduction at a reasonable price for the standard of model you can expect.

Lexmark C500n Color Laser Printer review

2008-08-08T17:15:00.001-07:00

Lexmark C500n Color Laser Printer Review
Reviewed by: Felisa Yang

Reviewed on: 22 August 2006

The Lexmark C500n is a basic, single-function colour laser printer geared for small offices and home offices. At £250 it seems expensive for a single-function machine, but the C500n's fast print speeds and network-readiness make it a good addition for small offices that have high-volume text printing needs. Although, for about the same price, the Samsung CLP-510n offers a duplexer, and the Konica Minolta Magicolor 2430DL serves up a PictBridge port.

If you have the budget, a colour laser multifunction is a cash- and space-efficient option -- it saves you from having to purchase separate devices, then find room for them. The HP Color LaserJet 2840 is more than twice the price of the Lexmark C500n, but it includes fax, copier and scanner functions -- useful in any office environment. If you're happy with the functions of the C500n but just want a speedier option, check out Lexmark's own C522n, which printed colour text and graphics at about twice the speed of the C500n and has more expandability options, too.

Design
Like all laser printers, the Lexmark C500n is a monolithic piece of machinery -- make sure you have room for it. It stands 480mm by 419mm by 386mm and weighs a back-breaking 30kg. Unfortunately, it has no built-in hand wells, so moving it is a slow and painstaking task -- you're better off getting someone else to help you.

The standard version of the printer comes with a single 250-sheet input tray. You can purchase an optional 530-page drawer to increase your total input to 780 pages. Additionally, the above-mentioned trays can handle up to A4-size paper only, but Lexmark also sells a legal-size paper drawer. Maximum output is 250 pages as well, and the output tray has a simple foldout flap to catch longer sheets. There's no straight pass-through on this machine, so be wary of using paper that has a tendency to jam when curled.

Features
The C500n is network-ready (wired only), which is ideal in a multiuser environment. Another unexpected benefit to the networkability is that the printer is noisy, even while idling, so you may want to stick it in an unpopulated area. Even better, it supports both Mac and Windows PCs. It comes with 64MB of nonexpandable memory and a 200MHz processor. It has no duplexer, so double-sided printing is a manual operation.

The entire front wall swings down to expose the four toner cartridges. They're set in a single-pass array, which makes for faster colour printing than with the older drum laser printers, which had to make a separate pass to lay on each colour. The C500n ships with starter toner cartridges. Unfortunately, Lexmark consumables are pricey -- the standard black toner cartridge (2,500 pages) costs £69, and the standard colour cartridges (1,500 pages) cost £76 each. If you do a lot of printing, you're better off with the high-yield cartridges -- the black (5,000 pages) will cost you £104 and the colour cartridges (3,000 pages) are £92.

The C500n has a simple top-mounted control panel. It consists of a Start/Go button, a Cancel button and four buttons for navigating the short menu -- Left/Right, Back and Select. A two-line monochrome LCD shows you the menu options, which are limited to basic configuration options and test/calibration options. Unfortunately, the LCD isn't backlit, making it difficult to see in low light.

Performance
If you do a lot of black printing, this might be the printer for you. The Lexmark C500n was a speed demon when printing black text and graphics -- 19.86ppm and 19.80ppm, respectively. It slowed down a good deal when dealing with colour, but it's still on a par with or better than the competition -- 6.43ppm for colour graphics and 6.88ppm for colour text. Lexmark's own C522n proved faster at graphics prints than the C500n. The print quality of the C500n was also quite good. It excelled at printing black graphics -- the text was clean and crisp.

Laser Printer ReviewsLexmark E321 Laser Printer Review

2008-08-08T17:02:00.000-07:00

The Lexmark E321 laser printer offers reasonable value to smaller volume users and offers a nice upgrade path. However this nice package is let down an little by mediocre image quality and average running costs.

Lexmark E321 Laser Printer Review
Reasonably fast, average print performance make this a solid if uninspiring choice.Available in striking black color the Lexmark E321 offers some solid print performance along with Mac support.

The Lexmark E321 is best as a low volume text only printer
With moderate running costs the Lexmark E321 can't keep up in high volume total cost of ownership comparisons with other laser printers in it's price range such as the HP Laserjet 1300. The Lexmark E321 also pales in comparison with the Laserjet's image print quality. Images printed on the Lexmark E321 look a little dark and murky and grey scale gradients don't look particularly smooth.

With that aside text comes out great with dark well defined letters all the way down to small font sizes.

Here are the specifications:
black: up to 19 ppm
8mb memory (expandable to 72mb)
Total Input Media Capacity 150 sheets (400 fully expanded)
600 dpi x 600 dpi for monochrome documents
Duty Cycle: 1,000 prints/month
With a parallel port and two USB ports and ethernet expansion possible this is a flexible printer. Coupled with Mac support the Lexmark E321 will appeal to some users.

Lexmark E321 Laser Printer, solid fast moderate volume laser printer?
If you don't need high quality image printing and need Mac drivers then the Lexmark E321 laser printer may be exactly what you're looking for.

However if you're in a PC only office and have high volumes or plan on having higher print volumes you may appreciate the lower total cost of ownership offered by competing models from Minolta or HP.

HP C7280 Photosmart All-in-One Printer review

2008-08-08T02:23:00.000-07:00

Customer Reviews

Software is major problem3
Setting up this printer was easy and it printed the test pages well, but, the software fought with other programs on my computer and slowed down my entire system. It took over 30 minutes to install it. Then once installed I could print from all of my programs except anything that had a word processor in it - even notepad. It would take from 2 to 8 minutes for my print menu to even come up. I also tried another HP printer the day before and had the same problems.

I also want to mention that I was on the phone with tech support for 3 hours and completely uninstalled and reinstalled the software which made no difference. His suggestion was for me to back up my computer and reinstall windows. I did not take his advise.

Instead, I am a proud owner of the Cannon MX850. It installed easily and functions wonderfully with my computer…no problems. I have always liked HP, but their software has made me switch.

Just as an FYI, I am running on Windows XP on a 3 year old machine with plenty of operating memory etc.

Other than the fact that I could not print from word processors, the printer did well with photo printing - great quality.

I like it…4
I got a great deal for $167. Couldn’t ask for more.

Pros:
> Wireless works perfectly fine. My printer is in other room connected to my wireless network and print from anywhere in the network.
> All in one feature - Printer, Scan, Copy, Fax…all at home…
> the web based printer admin interface is good too…

Conz:
> Makes some noticeable noise and shakes my table (its not too strong though) while it is printing. Its in other room so it doesn’t matter much for me…

Other points:
> You must assign fixed IP to your printer…otherwise if it is dynamically assigned then everytime you switch your printer off it gets a new ip while your computer (which I don’t shutdown at all) still holds the old ip…so you have restart the system to make it pick the new ip…but i didn’t face any issue after I assigned a fixed ip (good that there is an easy option to do that in the printer) to the printer…

> I tried all options and other then FAX everything worked fine for me…FAX somehow didn’t work the first time…i still have to try it again…must have something wrong…
HP C7280 is excellent…software is not so great4
The HP C7280 is fantastic. It’s fast, clean and makes very clear prints/copies.

The C7280 is fast and has great range when using wireless printing. I also enjoy viewing the pictures on the small screen prior to printing to make sure I actuall want it or not. It is great. I highly suggest it.

THe only issue, and its a BIG issue is the software. It’s terrible. After being on the phone with HP tech support and downloading and reloading the software, it was confusing, frustrating and it was almost enough for me to take it back. It crashed my windows XP where I had to get it reinstalled. This is a MAJOR issue and HP really needs to resolve it. I finally got it to work after downloading other fix it files from the HP site. (I wish I had the link to share). After a week, I finally got it working on one of my computers. This computer would get at least 4 stars out of 5 if the software was easier to install and didn’t screw with my operating system.

Epson Stylus CX7000F All-In-One InkJet Printer

2008-08-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

Price Paid: $40.00 from Fry's Electronics

Description: The Epson Stylus CX7000F All-In-One InkJet Printer is fully compatible with PC systems. This printer connectivity interface:

Summary:
I purchased a CX7000F - refurbished - at Fry’s, and after printing about 6 black and white documents, it showed that two of the color cartridges were low and the blue and black were about 2/3’s gone. Don’t buy this model and check reviews on similar models like the CX6000 which have the same problem.

I’m trying to work with Epson customer service on this. Initially they told me to reseat the cartridges, but that didn’t do anything. After reading the comments on here, I am surprised at their response. They had to know that this would do nothing to solve the problem. Maybe they thought I would just buy more cartridges and go away. I called their customer service line and they are now sending me new cartridges. I don't know that this will solve the problem.

I was thinking of purchasing a more advanced and expensive Epson down the line, but I will look at other brands now. At least I didn’t pay much for this one. Nice scanner, lousy printer. Fortunately I still have my 10-year-old HP that prints hundreds of pages before I need new cartridges.

Technology (Detailed) Inkjet
Output Type Color Printer
Printer Type All-In-One
Platform PC
Form Factor Desktop

Strengths:
Very nice scanner. I am giving this a value rating of 2 starts only because of the scanner.

Weaknesses:
Major ihk hog. I think a printer should print more than 10 pages before running out of two cartridges and depleting the other two by half.

Customer Service:
Sending me new cartridges. I doubt that this will solve the problem.

Epson Stylus DX4400 All-in-One printer review

2008-08-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

Author Simon Williams

The Stylus DX4400 is conventionally styled, but unconventionally coloured in slate grey. With a straight-through paper path from back to front and a fold-down, telescopic output tray, there's nothing unusual about the physical design, either. According to Epson, the input tray can hold up to 80 sheets of 60gsm paper, but who uses 60gsm paper on a regular basis? We managed to load 80 sheets of standard 80gsm office paper.

The spec sheet for this printer claims print speeds of 25ppm for black print and 13ppm for colour, but even in draft mode these speeds are way off what you're likely to see in real life. Our five-page text print took 2 minutes 9 seconds to complete, giving a speed of 2.3ppm and the black text and colour graphics print, also five pages, took a pretty exceptional 6:09, just 0.81ppm. Both these speeds are singularly unimpressive, with the colour print being one of the slowest we've seen.

The output quality is not too bad given the price of the printer but black characters still come out more jagged than most of the DX440's rivals. Solid colours are dense with good registration and little bleed of black text over coloured backgrounds. Variegated colour is also very reasonable for this class of machine.

An A4 copy came out quite a bit paler than the original but colours were still solid even though they were lighter. Our photographic print, on Epson's Premium Glossy photo paper, reproduced well with smooth gradations of colour and fine detail in the foreground. Colours were generally natural, though quite a bit of detail was lost in shadowed areas.

Epson printers have never been known for their quietness. While printing itself is only a little noisier than its main competitors, the Stylus DX4400 rattles away when feeding paper, giving a peak noise reading of 70dBA. This is really quite loud and noisier than most printers, of any technology type, we've tested before.

This is a four-colour printer using four separate cartridges. You can replace them individually as they run out and this gives good print economy. The cheapest way to buy cartridges is in a four pack, which sells for around £13.68, giving page costs of 2.22p for black and 4.85p for colour pages.

These costs are very competitive, even with printers costing considerably more, and are pretty much best-in-class compared with the entry-level all-in-ones we've tested recently.

Verdict

The Stylus DX4400 is a mixed bag. Epson has managed to produce a good-looking, functional all-in-one at a very competitive price, while still offering individual ink cartridges and low running costs. Print quality is also reasonable and the printer handles photo printing surprisingly well for a machine not geared specifically to photos.

Where it misses out is on print speed and noise level. It takes a long time to produce a page and could never be described as quiet thanks to Epson's trademark paper feed mechanism.

Brother MFC-660CN All-in-one printer review

2008-08-07T06:28:00.000-07:00

All-in-one inkjet multifunction device

23 November 2006 - The primary attraction of any all-in-one device is simply a matter of size, and in this regard the MFC-660CN does not disappoint at just 468 x 370 x 180mm and weighing 8.5kg.

We can remember having a fax machine that was bigger, and heavier, than this just a few years ago! The secondary attraction is hinted at in the name, that multi-functionality, and once again satisfaction is guaranteed here as you get a full colour inkjet printer and photo printer with network capability and memory card readers, that network facility extending to the flatbed scanner and standalone fax machine functionality. Then there’s the photocopying, the hands free telephone and digital answering machine to consider.

Yes, it does all of these things, but it doesn’t do any of them with a sense of superiority. That is the price you pay for convenience, and at around £175 you would be hard pressed to come up with separate devices for less that would come anywhere near the levels of performance found here.

But, and it really is an opera diva sized but, there are much faster inkjets, much higher quality photo printers, much more fully featured answering machines, and more flexible scanners.

Not that the MFC-660CN does anything particularly badly, you understand. Black and white printing can reach a maximum 27 pages per minute, colour up to 22 pages. Colour photo printing is much, much slower and despite the claimed maximum 6000 x 1200dpi print resolution the results of our photo prints were a tad disappointing, lacking in colour vibrancy compared to many standalone photo printers.

You do get a 20 sheet photo paper feeder, a 2.5-inch colour LCD for previewing images direct from the memory card (multi-card reader built-in) or camera (via PictBridge connection) and accessing menu functions. A nice touch is the inclusion of a facility to print out thumbnail index sheets directly from a memory card.

The device is also network ready, which is nice, but not wireless which is a shame. And talking of shame, the 100 sheet paper capacity would have us screaming very quickly as it really doesn’t take long to get through that sort of volume even in a small home office.

The telephony is certainly adequate for this kind of environment, with an auto document feeding fax (up to 10 sheets) and a modem speed of 14,400, all without the need for a PC to be running as this is a proper grown up standalone fax. The telephone itself has 80 speed dial slots and a digital answering machine all built-in, plus duplex speakerphone to allow both parties to be heard at the same time.

Other office functions are equally well supported, so there is flatbed photocopying which allows for enlarging or reducing of documents in 1% increments between 25 – 400%. The scanner will scan to email, OCR, file or print with a maximum interpolated resolution of 19200dpi (600 x 2400dpi non-interpolated).

This Brother device uses single colour ink cartridges, so there is no wasteful throwing away of unused ink to pollute the environment which is good. A black cartridge will give around 500 pages @ 5% coverage for £15, while the Cyan, Magenta and Yellow cartridges provide 400 for £8.50 at the same coverage rate.

Yet despite all this, truth be told we would rather sacrifice a little table space and have a better photo printer, a decent laser for documents, and a fully featured cordless telephone answering combo. Trouble is, we wouldn’t have anywhere to put the flatbed scanner then…

VERDICT
Falls into the jack of all trades but master of none category, yet for the home office it remains an attractive space saving option and offers good value for money.

Brother MFC-8440 Multifunction Laser Printer Reviews

2008-08-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

Nothing makes you feel more comfortable than knowing your printer was made by a company named, “Brother.” The fraternal bond between you and printer forms immediately upon its purchase, and you feel that no matter what bully forces you to change the ink cartridge or get paper jams — Brother will get you out of it.

The Brother MFC-8440 is advertised as being a 5-in-1 multifunction laser printer that faintly resembles a hammerhead shark if a hammerhead shark could print and scan and fax and copy.

The reason we say “advertised” is because, no matter how hard we look, we can’t find the fifth option — and we can’t quite imagine what a fifth option would be. Yes, it scans, yes, it faxes, yes it prints and yes it copies — which makes four. What could that fifth option possibly be? Text messaging? Bluetooth? Teleportation?

We’re not sure. But what it does do it does well — and at the low cost (well, fairly low — more on this later), it does become a more or less worthy addition to your home or office.

The printer is a 21-ppm laster printer that can print up to 2400 x 600 dpi resolution — it’s also an up to 21-cpm legal-size digital copier (which can make enlargements and deductions from 25 to 400 percent), a fax machine with PC capability, and a 9,600 x 9,600 dpi flatbed scanner.

It’s a good all-in-one machine with a mysterious fifth feature (figure the feature out! Fun for the whole family!) — and there are only two problems. Brother, as opposed to the fraternal connection we all expected, has awful, awful support. It’s the equivalent of you asking your brother for help and him putting you under a laundry basket and sitting on it. Or, say, him waking you up in the middle of the night to tell you you’re all going to Disneyland, and once you pack your things he says he was kidding and goes back to bed…

…so, yes. Bad support.

Also, as opposed to many other printers, this one uses a combined toner and drum unit — meaning if one or the other runs out or breaks — you have to get the combo pack to replace it, meaning in the end, you’ll be paying quite a bit more than you expected you would be.

It is, however, a good and fairly cheap printer (and fax, scanner, copier) — and if you have the money to afford the cartridge/drum unit — you won’t be disappointed.

Things That Make It Special:

* PC and Mac compatible.
* Parallel and USB interfaces.
* Prints, copies, scans, and faxes — a 5-in-1 printer! (What?!).
* Up to 21 ppm print speed.
* Up to 2,400 x 600 dpi print resolution.
* Up to 21 cpm copy speed — allows you to reduce/enlarge 25% to 400%.
* Fax forward and paging — with up to 390 broadcast locations.
* Mysterious fifth feature allows you to control all human life.

Reviews of the Polaroid PoGo Portable Photo Printer

2008-08-07T06:19:00.000-07:00

By Kara Soos
Review Roundup: Zink Technology Shrinks the PoGo Printer Into the Palm of Your Hand

The name Polaroid conjures images of excited young children shaking blank pictures until the film magically exposes (or if you're younger images of that Outkast video). Fast forward thirty odd years and thanks to the magic of asset sales, the name Polaroid lives on even though the original company no longer does. This time around, Polaroid is selling a portable photo printer that fits in the palm of your hand — PoGo. No shaking required.

The teeny PoGo printer marks the first to use of Zink's zero-ink technology, which we first covered way back in January 2007. To put it simply, the Zink technology embeds dye crystals right on the paper, which the printer head heats up and brings to life. With the PoGo, you can print photos from your camera phone via Bluetooth — or from a PictBridge-enabled digital camera via USB.

Now that the PoGo printer has finally shipped, we felt compelled to report on all the reviews out there, both amateur and professional.

PC World: Kids and Real Estate Agents Will Love It

"In the end, the PoGo's appeal lies in its mobility and its near-instantaneous picture production. Teens and tweens, in particular, will love this feature; and casual users and business folks (for example, real-estate agents who want to print pics of specific rooms for clients without delay) may appreciate PoGo's portability," says Melissa J. Perenson of PC World.

Gizmodo: We Hate Most Gadgets, But We Like the PoGo

"[T]he pictures are dry as soon as they develop, and you NEVER replace ink or toner cartridges. The prints are also waterproof, tear and fade resistant, and have an adhesive backing so you can stick them anywhere," comments Benny Goldman of Gizmodo.

Stuff.TV: Fun Though Flawed

"The print quality isn't the sharpest we've seen, but for pure convenience and, dare we say it, fun, it's great value. Even the paper ... is a lot cheaper than traditional instant film," writes Stuff.TV.

RISMedia: Bluetooth Phone Compatibility Not Complete (No iPhone)

"I was disappointed that it does not work with all Bluetooth phones. Jon Pollock, a Polaroid spokesman, said the PoGo is compatible with about 80 percent of the Bluetooth phones sold during the past two years. I tested it with 11 phones and was able to print from only five of them. One phone that's noticeably absent from the list of compatible phones on Polaroid's Web site is the Apple iPhone," lamented Etan Horowitz of RISMedia.

Wired: Uhm, We Told You Not to Shake It

"The heat-sensitive paper is well, rather sensitive. After my colleague printed out a pic of a Ferrari, he instinctively started shaking it to make it develop. Although the image was fully baked, the tight grip of his thumb and forefinger on the thermal paper actually discolored it slightly. Word to the wise: If you scoop up a PoGo, keep your shots away from moderate heat," advises Daniel Dumas of Wired.

Pixelated Image: Short Battery Life But One of a Kind

"Battery life could be longer, print quality could be much better, but if you NEED something like this — there's nothing else like it," acknowledges David duChemin of Pixelated Image.

jC Photography: The PoGo Has Hipster Written All Over It

"Think of this as really the new Polaroid print ... unexpected saturated colors with imperfect photos in general. I'd say its imperfections in terms of image quality is aesthetically cool," according to JJ Casas of jC Photography.

Tracy and Matt's Blog: Photos in Your Pocket

"[The PoGo prints] aren't going to compete with specialist photographic services or even the larger inkjet photo printers that you can buy these days but you have to remember this is a printer that fits in your pocket! When you consider that you can produce prints practically anywhere and any time then you begin to see where this little gadget will find its market," concedes Matt of Tracy and Matt's Blog.

Lexmark - P915 Photo Printer review

2008-08-06T18:21:00.000-07:00

The stream of new printers hitting the market shows no sign of slowing down, with all the major manufacturers keen to fill every niche, however small, with a printer of some description. Lexmark's P915 Photo printer is a well-priced, six-colour inkjet printer aimed at the home user and features an LCD screen and fast print speeds.

As befits a home printer, the P915 Photo Printer is no boring grey lump of plastic and is decked out instead in a slightly less boring pale grey and metallic blue finish. With both paper trays extended it measures 42 x 45 x 30cm, so it takes up a fair bit of desktop space.

The P915 Photo Printer comes with a 100-page feed tray and uses Accu-Feed paper handling technology to detect the media type, automatically adjusting driver settings to produce the best quality print. It prints up to a maximum resolution of 2,400 x 1,200 dpi (dots per inch) for monochrome printing and 4,800 x 1,200 when printing colour.

Considering its price it's a real surprise to find an LCD panel on the P915 Photo Printer; not only is there one, but the 2.5-inch panel is also colour. It not only previews your photos (in stand-alone mode it also shows how the finished print will look), but also walks you through how to change the print cartridges with a neat little video, so you can see how to do it while you are changing them. And it displays a timer which counts down how long your print job will take.

All the controls sit on the front fascia on either side of the LCD panel. To the left are buttons to rotate images seen in the LCD, and set the number you want to print. The power button is here as well. To the right sit the majority of the control buttons, clustered around a larger toggle button. These control all the other functions related to printing your photos; print preview, select, menu, stop/clear, resize and start. The toogle button itself has the dual functions of scrolling through your photos and selecting menu options.

At the far right-hand side of the front panel sits the card reader and PictBridge interface. The card reader reads all the commonly used flash memory cards; CompactFlash Type I & II, Memory Stick, Multi Media, Secure Digital, SmartMedia, Microdrive and xD cards.

Lexmark quotes performance figures of 22ppm (pages per minute) black and 15ppm colour for the P915 Photo Printer, but these are, as usual, just engine speeds and were borne out by our tests of engine speed. In reality it prints text at a shade under 8ppm, while this drops to 4ppm when printing a mix of text and graphics.

Text quality is good with sharp, unblurred images. It takes just over a minute to print an A4 colour print on normal paper and five minutes when printing on glossy premium paper. Colour prints show good colour separation and sharpness.

The P915 Photo Printer comes with Lexmark's own Imaging Studio software which guides you through all aspects of your print job; printing photos in common sizes, attaching images to e-mails, printing from memory cards, printing albums of varying sizes of photos and resizing photos.

HP Photosmart C4280 All-In-One Inkjet Printer review

2008-08-06T17:57:00.001-07:00

Earlier this year, I found that I needed a new printer AND a new scanner. Rather than buy separate components, I shopped around and found the very affordable HP Photosmart C4280 All-In-One Inkjet Printer. At only around $100 or so, it is a great printer for the money.

I was especially looking for something that would give me decent quality prints of my digital photos, which I use for my scrapbooking projects This little machine does the trick!

The machine comes with one black cartridge and one three-color ink cartridge, which do the job well. But for enhanced color for your photos, they make a six-color cartridge that you may want to invest in.

The ink cartridges aren’t dirt cheap (black goes for about $15, tri-color for about $20, you can save by buying a two-pack with one of each). But they last surprisingly longer than I thought they would. Just do yourself a favor and use only genuine HP inks, I have used cheapo ones in other printers, and they ruined the printers.

The scanner and printer features work really well, too. You can set it to scan into your favorite image editing software, or just use the software that comes with the device. And it makes good quality photocopies, as well…no more having to go out to a copy shop, or put money in the machine at the library.

You can either print photos from your computer, or you can insert your camera’s memory card and print from there, no computer needed for this. There are slots for various sizes and types of cards, including the SD card and Compact Flash.

The only thing is that this does NOT come with a USB cord, which is required for hooking it up to your computer. You will have to either buy one separately, or just use the one from your old printer, which is what I did.

If you are looking for a good all-in-one printer and are on a budget, you could do much worse than this one. I highly recommend it for those looking to spend around $100 or so.

HP DeskJet 5850 Printer Review

2008-08-06T04:18:00.000-07:00

Last week I bought a brand new HP DeskJet 5850 Wireless Inkjet Printer from our local Apple store where it was a featured Apple-friendly printer. I bought it primarily because 1) I need a new printer and 2) it has a wireless networking option which would give me much more flexibility on where I could place the printer in my home office.

The other night I attempted to connect the computer to my new airport extreme equipped G5 on my airport extreme network. I followed the directions that came with the printer religiously. It didn't work. I could get the computer to see the printer if it was connected via an ethernet cable to my airport base station. But once I tried a wireless connection, Apple's Rendezvous couldn't find it. I think I spent around two hours in total trying to troubleshoot this stupid printer. So tomorrow it goes back to Apple. There is a 10% open-box fee on returns. Maybe they'll wave it given that the thing doesn't work as promised. But even if they don't, I'd gladly pay the $15 bucks to not have to endure any more of the headache associated with this printer.

I guess it pays to look at user reviews before one makes a purchase like this. Perusing CNET and ZDNet reviews, this model has been panned by users for the same problems I'm having now.

Update: Well, based on the comments I received to this entry I decided to try again. This time I contacted an Apple rep from the Apple store where I bought the printer and he walked me through the set-up. We still could not get it to work. The problem is that if the printer is connected via an ethernet cable to the base station an IP address is assigned to the printer and the computer can see the printer. The minute you take the ethernet cable out of printer and try to find it using the wireless feature the computer can't find it. I took the printer back to the Apple store; they gave me a full refund. I had a long talk with the local Apple genius at the Genius Bar and he admitted that he was unable to get any of the HP wireless printers to connect to the store network via the wireless option. Hard cable worked, wireless did not. I suspect that the problem has to do with compatibility with the airport extreme base station. (By the way, I did follow the suggestions listed by people who had commented on this entry and downloaded the latest driver. Still didn't work.) When questioned which of the printers showcased at the Apple store would run on a network, the Apple guy said that none of them would. He did recommend a Brother model from Apple's online store so I'm going to look into that next. I've given up on wireless for now.

HP Photosmart A716 Portable Photo Printer review

2008-08-06T04:14:00.000-07:00

HP is one the biggest names in computers and computer peripherals such as printers, displays and more. For today's review we are going to have a look at HP's newest portable photo printer called the Photosmart A716 Portable Photo Printer. HP made this printer very small and completely self-contained so that you can take pictures on your camera and then print them without the use of a computer.

Review Verdict

The HP Photosmart A716 is the perfect printer for shutterbug that wants to be able to print and store photos on the go. That is assuming you don't mind paying twice what you could print the same photos for at your local Wal-Mart. At the end of the day the A716 prints great photos, but expect to pay for portability.
The Good & Bad
Very small and portable size
Optional internal battery for truly portable printing
Internal 4GB hard drive for extra photo storage
Burn photos on CDs & DVDs without PC
Decent photo output

Non-intuitive controls
High cost of ownership
No photo papers bundled
Difficult to edit photos on small LCD
No USB cable

Essential Specs & Stats
Dimensions: 9.9" x 4.6" x 5"
Printer tech.: Thermal inkjet
Max. color resolution: 4800 x 1200 dpi
Max. BW resolution: 1200 x 1200 dpi
Mfr-claimed printing speed: 39s
Noise level: 55 dB
Printable area: 5" x 7"
Paper-in capacity: 20
Screen: 2.5" LCD
Extras: TV output, 4GB HDD for photo storage, on-screen photo edit

Package Content
HP PhotoSmart A716 Printer
HP 110 Tri-color ink cartridge (5ml)
Setup guide
Power adapter
HP PhotoSmart Premier software CD
Slideshow remote
S-video cable

Canon SELPHY DS810 printer review

2008-08-06T04:11:00.000-07:00

Reviewed by: David D. Busch
Edited by: Lori Grunin
Reviewed on: 12/06/2005 Released on: 08/30/2005 The Canon Selphy DS810 is one mobile photo printer that you'll probably want to leave at home, despite its estimated 29-cents-per-print economy. The Selphy's three-color output, 9-by-9-by-4-inch, 4.2-pound design, and lack of battery support don't stack up well against those of smaller, lighter transportable printers in this price range. Print quality was especially disappointing; our test output frequently looked flat, and the composite blacks (produced by combining cyan, magenta, and yellow; there is no black ink tank) were more of a dark, muddy green.

The Canon Selphy DS810 is easy enough to use. Its top surface is dotted with 12 well-labeled buttons and switches, plus a four-way directional pad used to navigate menus and select print quantities via a flip-up 2.5-inch LCD. The Menu button cycles among print mode options, while photo adjustments are applied with a separate Settings button that pops up an additional menu. Two card slots accept CompactFlash, Microdrive, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, SD/MMC, and xD media, as well as Memory Stick Duo and Mini SD with an adapter. USB and PictBridge ports, an IrDA 1.2 infrared port for printing JPEGs from mobile phones and similar devices, and an optional Bluetooth adapter for linking to Bluetooth-enabled gadgets round out the connectors.

Press the Trimming key, and a resizable, movable grid appears over the photo image so that you can crop the photo within the constraints of the 4x6 print's 2:3 aspect ratio. There's also a Search button to find images on the memory card by date range, as well as a pair of zoom keys for enlarging or reducing the image on the screen. Printing functions are accessed with the Print, Stop/Reset, and OK buttons.

Most of the settings available for stand-alone printing involve layout or crop/trim options, as well as some image-optimizing choices, including red-eye reduction, saturation enhancement, noise reduction, brightness/contrast/hue adjustment, and a Face Brightener feature. The color-balancing adjustment involves printing a sample sheet with nine different versions, then reprinting using your preferred setting. When printing from a computer using Canon's driver, you can access most of these settings, plus grayscale printing and a few extra special effects. Cropping, color correction, and other tweaks can be applied using the bundled Easy-PhotoPrint software or your own image editor.

While prints that didn't have a lot of deep black tones were acceptable, the murky greenish maximum-density shadows tended to make most colors appear to lack contrast. We also noticed some intermittent banding in many prints, which went away with head cleaning, and the ink droplets, which can be as small as 2 picoliters with Canon's Full-Photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering (FINE) technology, were easily visible under 8X magnification. Although Canon claims a 4x6 print can be output in a little more than a minute, we clocked this printer from as little as 54 seconds (using the default settings) to as much as 80 seconds per snapshot.

If you buy Canon's $39.99 ink/paper bundle, you'll receive two three-color ink tanks and 140 sheets of 4x6 paper, which works out to about 29 cents per print. Keep in mind, however, that the frequent printhead cleanings will waste significant ink and result in higher per-print ink costs.

Canon's support for the Selphy line includes a one-year limited warranty and a broad array of telephone and online support options. Toll-free, live technical support is available from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ET), Monday through Friday, and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday. There's a toll-free TDD support line for the hearing impaired, plus a separate number to locate authorized service centers for carry-in repairs. If all else fails and you don't want to wait in a telephone queue, Canon offers an e-mail address for sending questions to live tech-support representatives.

Disappointing output quality mars the appeal of the cost-effective and fast Canon Selphy DS810, which has little else to recommend it over the competition.

Lexmark X560n printer review

2008-08-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

by Brian Chen,

Lexmark’s X560n combines a scanner, copier, fax machine, and color laser printer in a multifunction (MFP) device designed for medium-sized workgroups. An MFP sounds like a good value, but the X560n’s difficult setup was an unnecessary headache for Mac users. It took us—with assistance from Lexmark—more than a week to set up the X560n’s scanner. When we finally got it up and running, the X560n was an average overall performer.

Product:
Lexmark X560n
Rating

Pros
Speedy; prints clean, legible text.
Cons
Included instruction manual is extremely confusing for Mac users; USB scanning option unavailable on the Mac; old-fashioned design; image prints look flat and unattractive.
Company
Lexmark
Price as rated
$999
OS compatibility
10.2 (Jaguar), 10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger). 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor compatibility
Intel-only
Best current price
$654.90

The X560n is bulkier than most laser MFPs we’ve tested, weighing almost 90 pounds and standing 3 feet tall. Installing the toner cartridges is simple and straightforward, and so is connecting the device via USB. When we connected the X560n via Ethernet, the MFP appeared automatically in our Bonjour network.

Then came the scanner setup, which was extremely difficult. The X560n only supports network scanning; there’s no USB support, which might have been easier to set up (although most offices sharing the MFP will most likely use the Ethernet connection). The scanner-setup portion of the user manual was very confusing, and we weren’t able to configure the scanner to communicate with a Mac over a network. We contacted Lexmark for assistance, and a after a Mac user at the Lexmark office could not set up the X560n’s scanner using the instruction manual, Lexmark rewrote its instructions. Only after that were we able to get the X560n’s scanner to communicate with our test system. Getting the scanner to work was anticlimactic: You can only perform scanning using the control panel, and from you can only choose from very minimal scanning options (i.e., resolution, black and white or color).

The X560n has an old-fashioned, unattractive design. Copying, faxing, scanning, and scan-to-email are accessible on the X560n’s control panel, which consists of gray buttons with gray labels. The buttons are an odd oval shape that doesn’t match the size of your fingertips.

Copying on the X560n is simple and straightforward: a button on the control panel allows you to switch between color and black and white, and you can adjust quality settings with the arrow buttons. The X560n’s built-in automatic document feeder adds to the copier’s ease of use.

Speed and image quality
The X560n’s strength is speed. It took 15 seconds for the X560n to print a 1-page Word document, 31 seconds to print a 10-page Word document, 1 minute and 57 seconds to print a 22MB Photoshop image, and 40 seconds to print a 4-page PDF. For comparison, Epson’s AcuLaser CX11NF (), a former Macworld Top Product in the multifunction laser category, took 10 seconds to print a 1-page Word document, 36 seconds to print a 10-page Word document, 1 minute and 26 seconds to print a 22MB Photoshop image, and 2 minutes and 19 seconds to print a 4-page PDF.

Our panel of experts gave the X560n’s text output quality a Very Good rating for its crisp, legible text. In our color photo test print, the X560n’s colors looked dull, blacks appeared flat, some fine details were lost, and blues were oversaturated. Our jury gave the X560n a Fair rating for photo printing. In our Graphics, Fine Lines, and Gradients test, the X560n earned a Good rating; graphics and gradients looked pleasing, but noticeable bends appeared in fine lines.

The X560n’s scanner was somewhat anticlimactic given the amount of time we took to set it up. Our test scans of a picnic photo and fine-line chart both earned Good ratings from our panel of experts. Reds were oversaturated and blacks looked flat; fine lines appeared a bit fuzzy.

The X560n’s copier earned a Good rating. In a copy of a Macworld magazine cover, artifacts appeared in bright colors. The overall image looked slightly over-sharpened.

Brother MFC-9840CDW printer review

2008-08-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

by Brian Chen

The Brother MFC-9840CDW is a multifunction color laser printer, copier, scanner, and fax machine with wired and wireless networking capabilities. It doesn’t come cheap, but if you’re looking for a versatile machine that does its job well, the MFC-9840CDW is a worthwhile investment. It can be a little tricky to use—especially when you’re setting up wireless printing—but you end up with high-quality output that’s produced quickly.

Pros
Speedy; includes duplexer, wireless connectivity, and an automatic document feeder; high-quality scans and print output.

Cons
Scanner software lacks options; wireless printing setup is slightly tricky.
Company
Brother
Price as rated
$800
OS compatibility
OS 10.2 (Jaguar), 10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger), 10.5 (Leopard)

Setup and usability
Setting up the MFC-9840CDW was a breeze. After powering up the machine and installing the toner cartridges, you have three connection options: Ethernet, USB 2.0, or 802.11b/g wireless. Connecting via USB is as simple as it sounds. And when we plugged in the device via Ethernet, the MFC-9840CDW automatically appeared as a Bonjour printer. The trickiest connection setup was the wireless, which required setting up IP printing. The user manual, however, does a good job of directing you through this process.

The MFC-9840CDW is ideal for medium-sized workgroups.
The MFC-9840CDW’s control panel is well designed and clearly labeled. Three large buttons allow you to choose between the fax, scan, and copy functions. The control panel consists of rubber buttons that are pleasant to use, and a bright, backlit LCD clearly displays the settings you can choose from.

The MFC-9840CDW includes a convenient automatic document feeder to make copying easy. A nice bonus is the ability to copy double-sided documents by pressing the Duplex button.

Disappointingly, the included scanner software doesn’t offer very flexible scanning options. It is, however, easy to use and straightforward.

Output quality and speed
The MFC-9840CDW outputted very good results overall, impressing our panel of experts. Text quality looked clean and professional, earning a Very Good rating. In our test print of a picnic photo, the colors overall were on the lighter side, but the image looked pleasing overall, earning another Very Good rating. The scanner’s output looked slightly dark compared to our control image, but the device captured fine details and the overall image was clear and realistic. The MFC-9840CDW’s copier received a Good rating: in a test copy of a Macworld magazine cover, some details got lost, and blacks looked slightly dull.

The MFC-9840CDW’s print speeds were impressive. It took just under 40 seconds to print a ten-page Word document, and 15 seconds to print a one-page Word document. Color scanning was a bit on the slower side: it took 1 minute and 11 seconds to scan an 8-by-10-inch photo at 600 dpi.

Customer Review of Canon Pixma iP4500 Photo Inkjet Printer review

2008-08-05T18:08:00.001-07:00

by Matthew K. Morgan
Customer Rating 5 of 5
Customer Summary Outstanding printer, great value
Customer Full Review I had a Canon BubbleJet BJC-4200 long ago, and after that printer I was very hesitant to even consider another Canon printer. When my most recent printer died, an HP DeskJet 970cse, I needed to find a good printer that could print duplex and produce quality output. After reading many, many reviews I decided to give Canon another chance. I am very glad that I did so.

The Pixma iP4500 arrived in a huge box, and as it turns out it needed the space. This is a larger printer than I expected, and as a result I had to rearrange my desk to find room for it. That's a small oversight on my part. The printer itself is an unassuming-looking box of a machine, though it resembles more of a printer when the paper trays are populated.

Setup was easy and straightforward, though I do recommend using the "getting started" insert before setting everything up. Though setting everything up is relatively self-explanatory, it is helpful to see the illustration of what to do in order before making the leap. Overall, setup took maybe 20-30 minutes once the parts were all out of the box and everything was set up.

Once configured, installing the drivers is simple. Drop in the CD, follow the prompts, and turn on the printer at the right time. No fuss.

Once set up and powered on, the printer is ready to go to work. I print a majority of my things in duplex mode so I tweaked the driver configuration to make it the default, after which the setting is more or less invisible. Everything in the driver configuration is very easy to find, straightforward, and simple.

There are two ways to feed paper into the iP4500. There is a top-loader which is the default paper source and there is a front-loading paper tray ("cassette" according to Canon's documentation). Heavier papers such as card stock should be loaded from the top-loader.

So, how does this printer perform? I'll break it down into two parts, speed and quality.

Speed - this is a relatively fast printer! Feeding it a print job that conists of a two-sided black and white print this printer can churn out the pages, including the dry time for the front page, in about 20 seconds. Granted, this is my experience and your mileage may vary but it's a good starting point from which to base your evaluation of the speed. My previous printer would take at least a minute to print the very same documents, and it still couldn't keep up when in draft mode. For photo printing it churns out a full-page 8.5"x11" borderless photo in roughly 45 seconds.

Quality - what good is speed without quality? This printer backs it up. The text and basic image quality is acceptable, though it could be a touch better. This is not noticeable in day-to-day print jobs. On photo printing, though, this printer is an absolute showstopper. The photos it prints, on photo paper, are better than most magazine prints and could easily be used for photo studio gallery shots.

It would be nice if the printer actually had a USB cable in the box, but this is a small thing.

Overall, this is a high-quiality, high-performance printer that is sure to please even the staunchest of critics. It is fast, creates beautiful output, and is very easy to set up.

Canon Pixma iP2600 Inkjet Printer review

2008-08-04T18:19:00.000-07:00

Home and student users should love this inkjet printer's output--and its price--but they'll need a little patience.

You find few true bargains among low-cost color inkjets--such products always involve trade-offs. But Canon's Pixma iP2600 color inkjet printer has the goods where it counts, producing surprisingly decent print quality, even on plain paper. As a result, this supercheap printer's mediocre speed may be less of an issue for many buyers.

How mediocre was its output speed? In our tests, the Pixma iP2600 printed text on plain paper at a rate of 8.5 pages per minute--its print speeds for color graphics and photos ranged from average to worse, but the actual printouts were worth the wait. Text samples looked deep-black and pretty crisp. Color images printed on plain paper appeared vivid, maybe even a bit overdone. On Canon's own photo paper, the same images improved markedly and were smooth, detailed, and natural.

The printer's simple, boxy design includes a 150-sheet rear input area and a 150-sheet front output tray. Both are surprisingly roomy, but the output tray--a foldout front panel with a narrow pivoting extension--is also disappointingly flimsy. On-screen prompts walk you through manual duplexing (two-sided printing). The ink cartridges are fairly easy to replace, and a helpful illustration sits above the bays.

The iP2600's control panel, however, is sparse and hard to decipher. It consists of two buttons with symbolic labels and integrated LEDs that turn on, turn off, or flash to communicate the printer's status. Such secret-code-like designs are typical among low-cost printers; apparently, making them easier to use costs too much.

The printer ships with standard-size black and tricolor cartridges; higher-yield versions are also available. Canon calculates the page yields based on a suite of standard documents with a mix of text and graphics. Even with the higher-yield cartridges, such a document costs at least 14 cents in ink alone (6.1 cents for black, 8.2 cents total for all three colors) and drains the cartridges within 300 pages or so. Simpler documents will use less ink.

Canon bundles useful software with the Pixma iP2600. The apps include a centralized interface for accessing the user guide and other support; an on-screen status monitor where you can also check printer settings; and Easy-PhotoPrint EX for editing and manipulating photos.

The Canon Pixma iP2600 is a cheap printer that many people could live with happily. It doesn't do much other than print well on both plain and special papers, but for this little money, tolerating its poky speed is worthwhile.

Canon imageCLASS MF4270 Black Edition Printer

2008-08-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

The Canon imageCLASS MF4270 is an inexpensive and mono multifunction machine for individuals or small offices. Unlike the brilliant Samsung SCX-4500, $ 299 Canon multifunction office characteristics friendly features, including an ADF, networking and one-sided printing.

It lacks some of the more advanced features, however, such as fax and transmission aboard scanning mulitfunctions found on more expensive such as Lexmark X342n and Dell 1815dn some offices occupied May need. If you need a multifunction training for a basic print, scan and fax needs, you will have learned to appreciate the affordable Canon ImageCLASS MF4270 task speeds rapid and constant output quality.

The control panel is busy, but everything is clearly defined. Two lines of text LCD is the centerpiece, but it is not backlit, so it can be difficult to read in low light. Above the LCD screen are three buttons teams - copy, scan and fax - which let you choose your task.

The Canon imageCLASS MF4270 is compact enough for a multifunction laser. It is 15.4 inches wide, 17.4 cm deep and 17.9 cm tall, and weighs 27.6 kilograms. The automatic feeding device mounted on the lid of the scanner can hold up to 35 pages of originals for a lot scans, copies and faxes.

Eight key line and alphanumeric keypad buttons let you quickly fax numbers. The fax region also commonly designated buttons to access features such as address book, dial code, hook, and repetition. Similarly, the copy area designated keys to enlarge or reduce copies, changing the density and quality of the image, and make copies collated double-sided copies and 2-on-1 copies.

The imageCLASS MF4270 comes with a 1,000-starter toner cartridge for printing. The replacement cartridge is good for roughly double that and is $ 70. This equates to approximately 3.5 cents per page. Although the cost is in line with printers same price, you can spend a little less on printing costs (about 2 cents per page) if you can afford to pony a little more money in advance for equipment. The cost is fine for an office in the light printing needs, but for those who feel wholesale volumes, the cost can rise rapidly.

The good: Inexpensive; network-ready; includes ADF and double-sided printing; can receive faxes in memory secure; always good printing / scanning quick and quality scanning and copying speeds.

The bad: Scan and fax features are somewhat limited.

The bottom line: if your office printing, scanning and faxing a term basic needs, Canon imageCLASS MF4270 is a good fit, with fast speed task and consistent quality output.

Canon Selphy CP760 printer review

2008-08-04T04:54:00.000-07:00

by M. David Stone

When I reviewed the Canon Selphy CP740 last year, I said that if you were looking for a dedicated small-format photo printer at a bargain price, this one would be hard to beat. The shelf life on that statement has long since expired, but now Canon has come out with the Selphy CP760 ($99.99 direct), essentially an upgrade of (and replacement for) the CP740. The competition is a lot tougher now, so the CP760 isn't the standout budget-price winner that the CP740 once was. Nonetheless, it's a perfectly capable photo printer, an improvement on the CP740, and certainly worth considering.

A thermal-dye printer, the CP760 is designed to print photos at an assortment of sizes up to 4 by 8 inches, although many (if not most) people will wind up using it exclusively for 4-by-6s. Like most of Canon's dedicated photo printers, it can print from a computer, a memory card, a PictBridge camera, or its built-in infrared port. Canon also sells an optional Bluetooth adapter ($49.99 direct) for printing from phones and other Bluetooth devices.

One of the few clear advantages that most small-format thermal-dye printers have over inkjets is smaller size. Inkjets, like the Editors' Choice Epson PictureMate Dash, tend to be about the size and shape of a large lunchbox. A few thermal-dye printers match inkjets for size, but most are closer to the CP760's 3.3-by7.9-by-5.6-inch (HWD) size and its 2.1-pound weight.

Not so incidentally, one of the exceptions to this size rule is the Selphy CP770. Canon says that the CP770 is essentially the same printer as the CP760, but it's built into a substantially different case and sold with a basket that the case fits into. This basket, which has its own handle, can also hold extra paper and ink rolls for improved portability.

Another difference between the two models is that the CP770 can print using an optional battery ($79.99 direct), while the CP760 is limited to AC power. The lack of a battery option limits the CP760's usefulness as a portable printer, despite the small size. It means you can't bring it with you to, say, a picnic or Little League game and print photos outside.

Setting up the CP760 is standard for a thermal-dye printer. Simply slide the ribbon cartridge into the side of the printer, load paper into the tray, snap the tray into the printer, and plug in the power cord. If you want to print from a computer, you can then run the installation program from the disc and connect by USB cable. Unlike the CP740, by the way, the CP760 doesn't include its own retractable cable.

The LCD for the built-in menu and for previewing photos is a meager 2.5 inches. A second strike against it is that it doesn't tilt, which means that if you're having trouble reading the screen you have to move your head rather than the LCD for a better view. As a point of reference, the LCD on the similarly priced Epson PictureMate Dash is 3.6 inches, and you can change its tilt as needed.

The menu offers just a few editing commands, including red-eye reduction, the ability to print a color image as sepia or black and white, and an image optimizer that you can turn on or off.

The output is solidly in the true-photo-quality range. Colors tend to be a little punchy rather than realistic, but no more so than many people prefer. The only flaw worth mentioning is one that I've seen repeatedly in Canon small-format photo printers. One of our standard test photos includes a bicycle wheel. As printed by the CP760, the spokes look like poorly drawn, ragged lines instead of straight metal spokes with smooth edges. As I've often noted when reviewing Canon printers, however, this is not an issue that will crop up on many photos. Most of the output is easily a match for anything you'd get from your local drugstore, and perhaps a bit better overall.

As with most thermal-dye output, the photos are reasonably waterproof and scratch resistant, thanks largely to a protective coating the printer adds as the last step in printing. You don't have to worry about passing a batch of photos out for people to look at and having them come back ruined. Canon also claims a reasonably long lifetime for the photos, at 100 years for photos kept in dark storage, as in an album, 30 years for photos kept behind glass, and 10 years for photos exposed to the air.

The CP760's print speed is essentially unchanged from Canon's previous generation of thermal-dye printers. I timed it on our standard test suite printing from a computer at an average 1 minute 4 seconds for each 4-by-6 photo. Printing from a CompactFlash card and from a Canon PowerShot S60 took just a little longer at 1:11 to 1:17.

These speeds are well within the typical range for small-format printers and certainly fast enough to be tolerable, but it's worth mention that the PictureMate Dash is faster. I timed it at 42 seconds for our standard computer-based 4-by-6 photos and 37 to 49 seconds per photo when printing from other sources.

One last issue—important for any photo printer—is the cost per photo. As I've already mentioned, the CP760 prints on several paper sizes, including credit-card size, 4 by 6 inches, and 4 by 8 inches. As you might expect, the cost per photo varies with the choice of paper. For a standard 4-by-6-inch glossy photo, the most economical package is $29.99 (direct) for 108 photos, which works out to 27.8 cents per photo. Here again, the PictureMate Dash has an edge, with a 25.3-cent cost per glossy photo.

The Canon Selphy CP760 suffers from some obvious disadvantages when compared with Epson's Dash printer—in speed, LCD size, and cost per photo. On the other hand, it doesn't have any important flaws (unless you count the fact that it sells for the same price as the Dash), and its ability to print photos at up to 4 by 8 inches is a potentially important extra that the Dash lacks. The PictureMate Dash is still the clear Editors' Choice for the budget small-format photo printer category. But if you want flexibility in photo size, the CP760 will give it to you.

Lexmark X4875 printer review

2008-08-04T04:28:00.001-07:00

At 178x454x351mm, the Lexmark X4875 is at the larger end of the multifunction photo printer market, but it has a sleek design and contemporary colour scheme and, at 7.1kg, it's not the heaviest either.

We were impressed by the Lexmark X4875's features too. You can print from a PC and it offers support for SD, MMC, XD, MS and CF memory cards, plus the option to print straight from a digital camera via PictBridge.

The Lexmark X4875 also boasts USB and wireless connectivity, while scanning and copying facilities handle images up to 600x1,200dpi.

Once you've inserted a memory card, you can preview images on the Lexmark X4875's adjustable, pop-up 2.5in LCD display. Using the control keys, you can scroll through images, make simple edits on screen – brightness, image rotation and crop, red-eye removal – add border and colour effects, and change print size and quality.

However, when printing straight from the camera via the Lexmark X4875, the only editing functions you can access are those available on the camera itself.

Our test image took 28 seconds to print at A4 size on normal white paper in draft; at standard quality it took 1 min 1 sec, and 1 min 45 secs in best quality mode. Using the manufacturer's highest-quality settings on Lexmark's Premium Glossy Photo Paper – £14.99 per 50 sheets – an A4 print took three minutes and 42 seconds.

Images printed in best quality had the most vivid colours and on Lexmark's paper detail was clear and colours accurately portrayed.

Verdict
The choice of sources to print from and the excellent prints make the Lexmark X4875 a device we'd happily recommend. Good design and wireless technology are an added bonus.

By Carrie-Ann Skinner

HP L7780 Printer and All in One printer review

2008-08-03T19:15:00.000-07:00

Overview

Until now in our office we had been using an HP 7410 series. That model, which is also an all-in-one printer, scanner and fax, still works and will find a new home with a relative who has spoken up for it.

But between my husband (an attorney who tends to print in black and white, and is a heavy fax user) and me (an entrepreneur who does a lot of in-house marketing with color printing), we wanted something that printed faster with smart faxing capabilities. I’m happy to report that the new L7780 is faster and should be cheaper to maintain, too. It prints 10 color pages per minute (highest quality) and even more if you adjust for medium or lower quality — about double the speed of our previous printer. The print quality is excellent — crisp and clean looking and very close to laser print quality to my eye.

The OfficeJet Pro L7780 already is an important component of our small business office.

It can print from a wireless or wired computer network. It prints color and black-and-white copies.

It also comes with a suite of proprietary HP software so you can manipulate scanned documents and photographs, such as removing red eye effects. You can also download photographs directly from a digital camera to the printer — very convenient. And you can print crisp photographs on photographic paper.

On top of everything else, I love the stylish black design with round/edges and silver accents. The design looks contemporary and makes you feel good.

Quality
I consider the output quality excellent. I printed several documents and they turned out crisper than the old model we had been using. For marketing uses, the print quality is more detailed and sharper than any previous printer we have had. And the photographs and images I printed were impressive for home and office use.

Price
This machine retails for $499 at Staples, although from time to you will see specials or find it with rebates, making it significantly less expensive. I can remember our first inkjet printer many years ago, with far fewer features. It cost more than this one, and had about one-fourth the capabilities. Considering all the advanced features, I’d say the HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 is a bargain.

Canon Selphy ES1 compact photo printer reviews

2008-08-03T19:09:00.000-07:00

Andrea-Marie Vassou, Computeract!ve 09 Feb 2007

Increasing Canon's assortment of Selphy compact photo printers is the ES1; a diversion from the conventional design of the genre that prints from memory cards, digital cameras and a computer.

Standing vertically, the Canon Selphy ES1 has all its controls mounted on the top and an accompanying carry handle that makes it look more like a portable radio than a printer.

Setting up the ES1 to print is easy. Slot in a memory card to view photos on the 2.5in screen and then use the control buttons to print. Alternatively, connect Pictbridge or Canon Direct Print compatible cameras to the retractable USB cable.

The 'Creative Print' button allows for additional features such as adding speech marks to photos or printing four photos on one page. There's also red-eye reduction and cropping tools to edit photos on the display before printing.

A 6 x 4in photo takes just over a minute to print using the ES1's dye-sublimation cartridge. Dye-sublimation uses heat to thermally transfer colour to paper. As well as being totally dry when finished, Canon claims prints will last up to 100 years; so keep your eyes peeled for an update in 2107.

A 50 sheet paper and ink set costs £15, equating the cost per print at 30p. We've seen other compact photo printers and high-street services offering cheaper running costs but it's still not extortionate.

From a memory card and digital cameras, prints are detailed, rich and bright. Printing from a computer, however, is a little different; photos came out slightly blurry and faded. A USB cable must also be supplied as the ES1 is void of one in the box.

An optional Bluetooth adapter (£50) makes photo-printing possible from mobile phones and an optional battery pack (£65) utilises that aforementioned carry handle.

At £140, the Canon Selphy ES1 is by no means the cheapest compact photo printer on the market but its features are impressive.

Canon Selphy CP710 printer review

2008-08-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

Reviewed by: David D. Busch
Edited by: Lori Grunin

Product Summary

The good: Compact; decent print quality; easy to operate; Mac and Windows compatible.

The bad: No built-in cropping, rotation, or color correction.

The bottom line: The compact Canon Selphy CP710 dye-sub photo printer is fast and cheap to operate.

Specs:
Printer Type: Compact photo printer - Dye sublimation - Color; Max media size: 3.9 in x 7.9 in; Connectivity technology: Wired See full specs >>

Released on: 09/27/2005 On-the-go digital photographers traveling without a computer will appreciate the Canon Selphy CP710's small size, light weight, and mobility. When equipped with the optional rechargeable battery, this compact, 300dpi dye-sublimation printer has everything you need to output 4x6-inch photos anywhere; that includes a unique retractable USB cable for your camera, a built-in memory-card reader, and a 1.5-inch color LCD.

With its roughly 70-seconds-per-snapshot print speed and a per-print cost that ranges from 19 to 35 cents (if you buy Canon's 108-print paper/ink ribbon bundle and depending upon the retailer price), the Selphy is fairly quick and cheap to run, too. This printer shares most specifications with its stablemate, the bare-bones Selphy CP510, which lacks the card reader and the LCD screen.

The chief drawback of this printer is a lack of basic, stand-alone image-editing options, such as cropping, rotation, or color correction. For those functions, you'll need your computer and either the Easy-PhotoPrint bundled software or your own image editor.

The 7-by-5.2-by-2.5-inch, 2.2-pound Canon Selphy CP710 can be set up in seconds, even if you choose to travel with the bundled power brick. Connect the power, if necessary; insert the dye-sub ribbon cartridge in the right side; slide the included 20-sheet paper cassette into a flip-down front slot; and you're ready to go. Software and driver installation for printing from a computer take another few minutes.

Although the Selphy fits most desktops, you'll need to allocate an extra 7.5 inches in front for the paper tray and a few inches behind to allow the printer to cycle the paper through separate passes for the cyan, magenta, and yellow dye layers, plus a fourth protective overcoat. We had to carefully arrange the power-supply cables to avoid interfering with the paper path.

The pull-out USB cable for your camera and a memory-card reader for Secure Digital/MultiMedia Card, CompactFlash, Microdrive, and Memory Stick media (as well as Memory Stick Duo, xD-Picture Card, and Mini SD card with adapters) reside on the front, just above the input cassette/output tray. A USB port, for connecting to your computer, and a Direct Print port are located on the left side. All the other controls are found on top. A control pad for selecting images and the quantity of prints for each image is located to the right of the fixed LCD. Under the display are a trio of buttons for printing mode (print selected images, all images, or prints specified in the camera using DPOF), layout (bordered, borderless, stickers, or index print), date options, and a Print/Stop key to activate or cancel printing of selected images.

You can make only postcard-size 4x6-inch prints using the bundled paper cassette; you must purchase separate cassettes to print credit-card-size sheets or stickers, L-size (3.5x4.7-inch), or wide (4x8-inch) paper sizes. The latter stock, suitable for printing panoramas, can also be purchased in greeting card kits, complete with mailing envelopes.

The Canon Selphy CP710's printer driver is as basic as the printer itself, with three tabs for paper size, orientation, number of copies, and border/borderless printing; image adjustment, which provides the color-correction, saturation, and brightness/contrast tweaks the printer lacks in stand-alone mode; and utilities, which offers no utilities (a by-product of using a single driver across all printers). Canon's PhotoRecord photo-album application and PhotoStitch utility for merging images also ship with the printer. With an optional Bluetooth adapter, you can print from Bluetooth-enabled camera phones.

The Selphy CP710's colors were good, with a fairly broad tonal scale and rich saturation. There was lots of detail in highlights and shadows, but diagonal lines did display stair-stepping, as is typical with dye-sublimation technology. The composite blacks (formed by combining the cyan, magenta, and yellow colors; there is no black panel in the dye-transfer ribbon) were dense and neutral. Flesh tones were pleasing, though we noticed the faintest of blue casts in the whites of some prints.

Canon's support for the Selphy line includes a one-year limited warranty and a broad array of telephone and online support options. Toll-free live technical support is available from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET Monday through Friday, and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturdays. There's also a toll-free TDD support line for the hearing impaired, plus a separate number to call to locate authorized service centers for carry-in repairs. If all else fails and you don't want to wait in a telephone queue, Canon offers an e-mail address for sending questions to live tech-support representatives.

Since the Canon Selphy CP710 requires a PC for basic image manipulation, you may be better off with its less-expensive sibling, the CP510, but if all you need is a screen to preview your shots, the extra cost of the CP710 may be worth it. But for better print quality, faster performance, and a broader feature set, you may want to go with an inkjet model instead of dye sublimation.

Canon PIXMA iP4300 Inkjet Printer review

2008-08-03T18:52:00.000-07:00

Good Points
I bought the ip4300 5 months ago to replace a now non-working 5-year-old Hp 940c.
My main concern was printing photos along with fair text abilities. I got A+ on both
Just for kicks I re-printed some old photos with it. The colors were eye-popping by comparison and I had thought the HP940c produced outstanding prints.
I've even compared them to several other printers, new and old owned by friends. We all agree the ip4300 produces better prints and they are equal or better than we can get from local photo labs.
I use Canon EasyPhotoprint, Picasa2, MS Digital Image Suit 2006 and an HP printing program as my main photo editing software. The results from all are excellent.
Ink usage is about as good as the old HP, I get over 150 8X10s on a cartridge. I do my own Christmas cards and holiday photos for friends and family.
I've just replaced the 3 color cartridges, I get a kit of all 5 for around 56 just a bit less than what the HP replacements cost. I expect to use 3 or 4 kits a year.

Bad Points
The US printer does not come with the CD label writer and installing it voids the warranty.
Cartridges are still expensive.
The manual is a basic starter book. It could be a lot better and more inclusive.

General Comments
This is an excellent printer. I have used it with about 6 different photo papers. I always buy the most economical (cheapest) and so far all have given excellent results, after figuring out the best printer settings for each.

In the normal mode it is quiet and it also has a quite mode.
It is fairly fast: I get great prints, 4X6s in about 30 seconds and 8X10s in about a minute.

I get great text documents on regular paper and near professional ones when using high-grade paper.
The auto two-sided printing, an option on other printers but standard here, is great.

All features can be selected and controlled from the computer.

Cartridge info is adequate, the Canon program keeps you informed and provides warnings. The cartridges also have indicators informing you of their status.

It boasts true borderless prints but so far I have not been ale to get any. That may be me not figuring out the settings yet.

Unfortunately it feels flimsy, not nearly a sturdy as I would like but I don't intend to be moving it around much.

The ip4300 is hard to find now but the replacement ip4500 has the same Pixma technology and slightly better specs.
I would recommend the ip4300 to anyone needing a low cost (under US$100) photo printer with very good text capabilities.

HP Photosmart 100 Printer review

2008-08-03T18:40:00.000-07:00

Product Requirements:
Device:
Digital Camera with any one of three following memory module formats: Compact Flash, Smart Media, or Memory Stick.
No computer is necessary unless you want to store or manipulate images.

Desktop:
Windows 2000, 98, 95 or NT 4.0 with USB port support.
No Apple Macintosh support at this time.

Part of the magic of photography is seeing/sharing images as close to the �moment� as possible. This is arguably one of the key reasons for the success of the instant photo cameras like the ones made famous by Polaroid. Ever notice how everyone wants to see the viewfinder after you take a digital picture? Hold this thought for a minute.

My Mom and Dad still buy film, shoot it, drive it to the local drug store and pay about $0.50 per print to get twenty-four 4 by 6 inch photos, and then they only keep about six out of the twenty four. They are afraid of digital photography because of the �computer.�

As digital photography has come of age, the weakest link has been the problem of computer literacy, not to mention having to go back to the (digital) darkroom and print or email photos and remember who wants them. The cost of generating one�s own photos is also something holding-back general acceptance.

The HP Photosmart 100 printer does a nice job toward building a bridge of accessibility for digital photography by delivering photos �on-the spot,� not requiring the mastery of the point-and-click paradigm, and delivering them in a fairly cost effective manner.

The fact that it is this close at all really sold me on switching over to Digital. I am willing to pay a little extra to get my pictures on-the-spot, and not printing all of those BAD pictures has got to be better for the environment.

OK, enough about the numbers, let�s talk about the HP Photosmart 100 printer.

The unit itself is much smaller than a toaster, and prints a very nice borderless 4 x 6 photo in about 2.5 minutes, and I particularly like that it prints all the way to the border of the paper. It also makes a small proof sheet or wallet-sized (2.5 x 3.5 inch) photos. The printer also supports the DPOF protocol, which means that you can decide what to print while your digital film is still inside the camera, and when the card is plugged into the printer it already will know what to do.

(Left to right: 4 x 6 print, 2.5 x 3.5 print, proof sheet)

The printer comes with a CD ROM (containing the drivers to interface with a Windows OS machine via USB), user manual, power adapter, some sample photo paper, warranty card and that�s about it. If you are planning to give this as a gift to parents who speak English as a second language, never fear. The HP web site has several different language versions of the little manual ready for free downloading.

The top of the printer has a very simple backlit LCD-based user interface that uses icons. It is very easy to use.

I�ve compared the images from this printer to that of our HP PSC 950 and my brother�s Epson Photo printer (at the 4 x 6 size). When we use the good paper, it holds its own and in some cases did a better job with the exposure control than the larger PSC 950.

The units uses a 32VDC power supply, so in order to print photos while in the car, I use a 120VAC inverter and plug the wall adapter into the inverter. Think of it: you will be able to print photos at the family reunion picnic (or soccer game) to hand out to everyone while you�re still there!

The HP Photosmart 100 has been ideal for our family. My siblings, cousins, uncles/aunts have digital cameras, and (of course) they all use different memory storage formats. Imagine how much more fun those get-togethers are now? Never mind �just an hour photo� how about �hold on for a couple of minutes photo!� Everyone with all of their incompatible memory cards can now swap photos (albeit on paper) as well as with those aunts and uncles that don�t have an email address.

A close-up view of the front of the printer shows the Compact Flash card slot (left), the Sony Memory Stick card slot (right), and the Smart Media card slot (thin slot above the memory stick).

If you are really interested in buying this printer, your best bet is to go see some sample printouts at the retail outlet. You will see that this printer along with a 2+ mega pixel camera will do a fine job. Below is a picture of the printer �in action� making two wallet-sized photos.

A quick note on pricing: the price on HP�s website was much higher than the prices I found around town. Staples, CompUSA and Office Depot all had it for about $179. Office Depot has a �$10 in-store coupon� that you can print and Staples has a web coupon for �$30 off on a purchase of $150 or more� that brought the price down to $149 and was the clincher for me.

Pros:
Print Quality
Easy to use
Portability, small size
Compatibility
Quiet
�cost per print�

Cons:
32VDC power supply doesn�t allow direct powering from car/boat
USB port only

Brother QL-500 PC Label Printer reviews

2008-08-02T18:58:00.000-07:00

by M. David Stone

The first thing you need to know about the Brother QL-500 PC Label Printer is that it's not just another label printer. The second thing is that, compared with most label printers, the differences are almost all in the QL-500's favor.

The QL-500 is a little larger than the norm, with a footprint of 5.7 by 7.7 inches instead of the typical 4 by 6 inches you'll find in models from Avery, Dymo, and Seiko Instruments. That larger size is a small price to pay for all the extras you get, starting with the ability to print on labels up to 2.4 inches—while only having to spend about $100 for the printer.

Brother sells an unusually wide variety of labels, ranging from file-folder labels to continuous rolls. Seven precut sizes include address, shipping, and even optical-disc labels with a hole in the center. A built-in manual paper cutter lets you easily cut continuous roll labels to size. (The $130 QL-550 adds an automatic cutter.) Street prices for the rolls are $10 to $20. For the medium-size address labels, that works out to 2.7 cents per label.

Much more important than the variety of labels is that they're extremely easy to install. With most label printers, changing rolls is a pain, which discourages switching between label formats. Brother's label rolls come already mounted on spools that you just drop into the printer, and the feed design makes it unusually easy to thread the labels. That makes changing from one format to another quick and easy, and something you're much more likely to do.

The QL-500 is also noticeably faster than most label printers. We printed 50 address labels in 60 seconds. Even when printing a single label, the printer moves the label roll with authority, printing individual labels a second or two faster than the competition. That might not actually save time, but it's nice not to have to wait for the label.

One area that could stand improvement is the software, which is easy to install, but complex enough that it takes time to learn how to use. For example, it's not immediately obvious how to change the label format if you want to. Once you've learned the program, however, using it is reasonably easy. We count this as only a small flaw in a product that's a clear winner among label printers.

Canon Selphy CP500 - Compact Photo Printer reviews

2008-08-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

Photo printers that can produce ‘regular’ size prints without the need for a PC are becoming increasingly popular. Most of them, such as those from Epson and HP, are scaled-down inkjets, but Canon has taken a different route, offering a series of miniature printers based on dye-sublimation technology. The CP-500 sits high up inside this new range, but can still be had for just over £100 at street prices.

Dye sublimation uses a solid layer of ink on a very thin plastic film, which stretches the full width of the print. This is held in a plastic cartridge which has repeating bands of cyan, magenta, and yellow and a transparent covering layer for protection of the print. Each print has to pass through the printer four times, to take the three colours and the protective layer, which are transferred in turn to the print cards, using a thermal print head.

The head also runs the full width of the print, and the dye-based ink sublimes – turns immediately from solid to vapour without passing through a liquid phase. The vapour condenses on the paper, so although the printer is rated at 300dpi, there are no visible dots in the process. It’s what’s called continuous tone.

The Selphy CP500 is about the size of a thick paperback, though there’s a separate black power supply block and a cassette carrying the 6 x 4-inch postcard blanks, which clips in at the front. You also need to allow a space on your desk at the back of the printer, to accommodate each card as it’s fed out during the printing process. Various other paper sizes, including credit card, are available, with separate cassettes and ink film cartridges for each.

The printer driver itself is a simple affair – it doesn’t need to be as complex as a conventianal A4 printer, which has to cope with many different paper sizes and print options. Here, you're printing to a standard size paper and there is little to select other than portrait or landscape orientation. You can alter the colour saturation, but that's about it.

Making four passes through the printer slows down the overall print time for the Selphy CP500, but we still saw a borderless print emerge in 46 seconds when we printed from a PC. We also used a Canon Ixus 40 to print direct and were surprised that this took 37 per cent longer, at 63 seconds. Both times compare well with inkjet photo print times, though, which can hit 150 seconds for the same size print.

Print quality is little short of stunning. Free of the inherent dottiness of an inkjet, the Selphy is able to bring a clarity not normally seen on home prints and there's sufficient definition in the 300dpi output to reproduce even fine details exceptionally well.

You might expect a printer like this to be virtually silent in operation, and the printing process itself is little more than a slight crackle as the ink is transferred from the carrier film. Driving the card backwards and forwards for each pass of the print head, though, involves a high-pitched whine from the feed motors, which is at an annoying pitch and was measured at 59dBA - not quiet.

The printer comes with cards and ink for just five prints, which seems stingy, though a consumables pack for 36 prints costs just £11, giving a cost per 6 x 4-inch print of just over 30p. This isn’t bad, given typical costs for inkjet photo printers of up to 50p per print. It’s arguably more convenient to buy all your consumables together in a matched pack, too, though you would need around three Canon packs for the same number of prints as a single inkjet cartridge would give.

Verdict

If you want a printer specifically for printing photos and are never going to want to print above 6 x 4-inch prints, the Selphy CP500 is cheaper to run, quicker to print and produces higher quality images than any inkjet photo printer we’ve yet seen. It may be unconventional, but it does a great job.

A sprung door at the side gives access to the ink film cartridge, which slides in easily, though you have to be careful not to snag the thin carrier film. At the other side are sockets for USB 2 connections to any PC and to a digital camera conforming to the DirectPrint or PictBridge standards. Using this link, the printer doesn't have to be connected to a computer to be able to generate prints.

There are no controls on the top of the machine, just a small window showing the size of paper cassette fitted. This glows blue around its edges when the printer is powered up and flashes when it’s printing.

The Selphy is quite capable of printing from graphics files on your PC and Canon's ZoomBrowser software provides photo management functions, though it doesn’t always find all the folders on your drives, let alone all the pictures within them.

Canon i9900 Photo Printer reviews

2008-08-02T18:50:00.001-07:00

by M. David Stone

For high-quality photos up to 13 by 19 inches without the wait, the Canon i9900 Photo Printer is our printer of choice. It can serve as an all-purpose printer, but that would be like using a Porsche 911T as your everyday car.

Measuring 22.7 by 12.0 by 7.5 inches, the i9900 is gray and black with just two front-panel buttons and a USB connector for direct printing from a PictBridge camera (but there are no memory card slots). More interesting is that it uses eight ink colors, with a separate cartridge for each, adding red and green to the six colors photo printers typically have. As with the Epson R800, which leaves out light cyan and light magenta but adds red and blue, the additional colors yield a wider than usual color gamut.

These extra inks pay off in true photo quality. Text also rates as excellent; more than half of the fonts we tested were easily readable at 4 points with default settings. Graphics in default mode showed only minor flaws. Performance for photos was even more impressive, thanks to a printhead with 6,144 nozzles. The i9900, which we tested using QualityLogic's testing software and equipment, was blazingly fast on our new photo suite, at 30 seconds for each 4-by-6 photo and 1 minute 5 seconds for each 8-by-10.

We've learned to expect Canon printers with a high nozzle count to be far faster than all-purpose printers for photos, but slower for other applications, and that's exactly what we saw. The $100 Lexmark Z816, for example, a standard ink jet, took up to 4:24 for 4-by-6 photos and over 10 minutes for 8-by-10s. Yet the Z816 was faster than the i9900 for PowerPoint and three of the five Excel tests. So you can get faster text and graphics for a lot less money, but if you need a printer that does it all and produces superb photos fast, the i9900's combination of speed and output quality is tough to beat at any price.

Canon PIXMA MP780 printers reviews

2008-08-02T18:46:00.000-07:00

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Canon Europe introduces Selphy CP350 photo printer

2008-08-02T18:39:00.000-07:00

Canon Europe introduces Selphy CP350 photo printer
Canon Europe introduces the Selphy CP530 compact photo printer. The CP530 is a dye-sublimation thermal transfer (approx. 16.77 million colors per pixel) that creates a fine gradation look of film-based photographs. A special Protective Coating prevents UV exposure, water, spills and sticky fingers. The printer measures 179.0 x 127.1 x 63.0 mm and its printing speed is just 25 seconds to create credit card size prints. L size images print in 43 seconds, Postcard size in 52 seconds, and wide size pictures require 65 seconds...

Canon Selphy CP530 specifications:

Printing Method: Dye-sublimation thermal transfer (with overcoating)
Print Resolution: 300 x 300 dpi
Gradation: 256 shades per color
Ink: Dedicated ink cassette (Y/M/C/overcoating)
Paper: Postcard size,L size, Card size (full page label sheets, 8-label sheets), Wide size
Feeding System: Automatic paper feed from paper cassette
Ejection System: Automatic paper ejection on top of paper cassette

Print Sizes:
Postcard Size (4 x 6 in.)
･ Borderless: 100.0 x 148.0 mm (3.94 x 5.83 in.)
･ Bordered: 91.3 x 121.7 mm (3.59 x 4.79 in.)
L Size
･ Borderless: 89.0 x 119.0 mm (3.50 x 4.69 in.)
･ Bordered: 78.8 x 105.1 mm (3.10 x 4.14 in.)
Card Size
･ Borderless: 54.0 x 86.0 mm (2.13 x 3.39 in.)
･ Bordered: 49.9 x 66.4 mm (1.96 x 2.61 in.)
Wide Size (4 x 8 in.)
･ Borderless: 100.0 x 200.0 mm (3.94 x 7.87 in.)
･ Bordered: 91.3 x 121.7 mm (3.59 x 4.79 in.)
22.0 x 17.3 mm (0.87 x 0.68 in.) (per 8-label sheet)

Interfaces:
Connecting to a Canon Direct Print compliant camera/Pictbridge compliant devices:
･ USB compliant Type A connector
･ Retractable USB cable (Mini-B plug, 30 cm (12 in.))
Connecting to a PC:
･ USB compliant Type B connector
Bluetooth (Print Beam): Bluetooth Unit BU-30 required (sold separately)

Application Software:
･ »Ulead Photo Express LE (for Windows Vista, Windows XP)
･ »ZoomBrowser EX (for Windows OS)
･ »ImageBrowser (for Mac OS)

Power Source: Compact Power Adapter CA-CP200
Power Consumption: 60 W or less (4 W or less on standby)
Operating Temperatures: 5–40C (41–104F)
Operation Humidity: 20–80 %
Dimensions: 179.0 x 127.1 x 63.0 mm (7.05 x 5.00 x 2.48 in.)
Weight (Printer only): Approx. 915 g (32.3 oz.)

Canon Selphy CP770 photo printer review

2008-08-02T03:43:00.000-07:00

Canon Selphy CP770 review

With its striking yellow-and-white colour scheme, the Canon Selphy CP770 is a direct photo printer that really stands out.

Lightweight and practical, the Canon Selphy CP770 has a bucket design complete with detachable handle. When you're not using it you can store all the attachments and leads in the bucket and clip the handle back on to carry it to the nearest cupboard.

But it's not just the Canon Selphy CP770's design that impresses us.

The Canon Selphy CP770 can print from SD, MMC, Memory Stick or CompactFlash memory cards, from a camera over USB (cable supplied) or directly from a PictBridge-compatible camera. You can buy a separate Bluetooth connector to print wirelessly from a mobile phone.

You need to buy photo paper separately, however. A 36-sheet pack of 6x4in paper plus inks for the Canon Selphy CP770 costs £9.99.

To print, simply plug in a memory card or camera and use the navigation buttons to scroll through the images. You can preview these on the 2.5in LCD display on top of the Canon Selphy CP770.

The Canon Selphy CP770's Menu button accesses settings options that include turning date stamps on or off, removing red-eye and adding sepia or black and white effects.

You can change the layout or the number of photos per page and apply image optimisation – a feature commonly found on digital cameras which, in practice, we found made little difference.

The Canon Selphy CP770 prints at a fixed resolution of 300dpi and took 44 seconds to produce a clear and bright credit-card sized sticker featuring our chosen image. Times differ slightly for larger images: we certainly noticed a difference with image optimisation turned on.

Verdict
The Canon Selphy CP770 offers an excellent choice of connection and editing options and we couldn't fault it.

By Carrie-Ann Skinner

Epson SX400 printers reviews

2008-08-02T03:38:00.001-07:00

Epson SX400

The Epson SX400 is a sleek all-in-one printer/scanner with a neat design and a glossy black casing.

The Epson SX400's 2.5in pop-up LCD screen can be adjusted to get the best viewing angle.

As well as printing straight from a PC, the Epson SX400 supports four types of memory card, the contents of which can be previewed and selected on screen. We used the navigation buttons to adjust print quantity, quality and size before printing.

Epson provides PictBridge support, too, so you can connect your camera directly to the Epson SX400, although the USB cable itself is not supplied.

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More previewing and editing options are offered by the Epson SX400's printer driver dialog menus if you print photos stored on your PC. These include additional quality settings, red-eye removal and colour profiles.

As with the Epson S20 photo inkjet, with the Epson SX400 you can print items at sizes ranging from A6 (6x4in) to A4, while scanning and photocopying can be done at resolutions up to 1,200dpi.

An A4 print of our test photo took 15 seconds on draft quality, 28 seconds at Epson's standard quality and two minutes and 45 seconds on the Epson SX400's Best setting. Using Epson's Premium Glossy Photo Paper – £11.87 for 15 sheets – it took three minutes and 17 seconds.

While the print on the premium paper looked superior with bright, vivid colours, some of the skin tones did look slightly patchy. All four of the Epson SX400's prints were touch dry immediately.

Visit Photo Advisor for reviews of the latest cameras, and digital photography and video hardware and software products.

Verdict
The Epson SX400 is easy to use but we were slightly disappointed with its price and the fact that, when printing from a memory card, we couldn't access the photo best option that's available when printing direct from a PC. (You can find it much cheaper online, however.)

Epson Stylus Photo R2880 printer reviews

2008-08-02T03:28:00.000-07:00

The Epson R2880 does feature a couple of very welcome enhancements that bring the printer up to the same output quality as the larger 4880, 7880, and 9880 models. The most obvious of these is the replacement of the standard magenta inks with the newest Vivid Magenta and Vivid Light Magenta. These new formulations increase the color accuracy and gamut of the printer, especially in blues and purples. The black and white mode of printing is also improved with better neutrality and virtually no metamerism, and the printer now includes support for printing directly to CD/DVD media.

Setup
Setup is quick and straight-forward. The first think you'll notice if you're coming from an older model Epson like the R2400, is the redesign of the case. The printer now matches the look of the 3800, R1900, and R1400 with a clean desigb, and all controls on the top of the printer – nice for those of us that don't like bending over to view status buttons.

In addition to the standard feed, the Stylus Photo R2880 comes with a single sheet adapter for feeding thick media, and roll holders for printing from roll paper up to 13” wide. The Epson R2880 is the only printer offering in this class that supports roll printing, making it a top selection for anyone interested in long panorama prints. Also included, and new to the R2880, is a CD/DVD tray for printing directly to inkjet compatible discs.

After unpacking and removing all the tape and packaging materials, plug the printer in and follow the instructions to insert ink cartridges. While the R2880 charges the print head, you can install the software, including the printer drivers, Epson Print CD, and Epson Printer Utility. During the installation you'll be prompted to connect the printer. The R2880 has dropped the Firewire port found on the R2400, and added a second USB 2.0 port. You can connect the printer to two computers for a limited form of sharing, or you can connect to a wireless print server for network use. It would be nice to have a built-in Ethernet port like the HP B9180, and Epson's larger printers, but as the majority of users will have this connected to a single computer, this is a fair trade-off.

Ink cartridges are small, with about 11ml of ink each. If you do a lot of printing, it's more economical to go with a larger printer and their higher capacity ink tanks, but for most users, the smaller cartridge sizes won't be an issue. Although I don't have quantitative data, ink usage on the R2880 appears to be improved over the previous model.

Pros: Excellent color; truly neutral black and white; prints exhibit fine detail; improved build quality; moderately useful roll paper holder included

Cons: Still have to swap Photo and Matte black inks; bundled with small capacity inks; awkward rear feed for specialty papers; bundled profiles print a little dark

Price: $799

Hewlett-Packard Photosmart C8180 All-In-One Printer

2008-07-31T03:54:00.000-07:00

US $399.99

I've been a happy user of my HP 7280 all-in-one unit for a number of months. After I reluctantly returned the C7280 review unit, I put my money where my review mouth was, bought one, and have had no regrets.

HP asked me to review the C8180, and here's what I found after using on it for quite a while.

First off, the 8180 is not simply a 7280 with HP's revisions du jour; it has a higher resolution scanner and printer. According to HP, the additional sensors that make up the 96 bit scanner sensor produce better color accuracy as well as reduced noise and grain from negatives. It is more obvious when scanning certain colors, like saturated reds and greens, and scanning certain types of originals, like offset press or inkjet prints. As we'll see, actually producing a 96 bit scan is awkward.

However, the 8180 has no fax capability at all. It has the same abilities to read from various types of camera memory cards, and it also can print via USB, Ethernet, or 802.11b/g wireless. It has no 802.11n capability. It also has the same print engine that uses six separate ink cartridges.

One important new addition is a CD/DVD burner with LightScribe capability. LightScribe allows you to print custom images or text on the face of LightScribe-compatible blanks. In addition to being controlled by the 8180 itself, the burner can be shared with your computer, and any application can print to the LightScribe print driver.

The 8180 comes with a sheet feeder capable of handling various paper sizes and quantities, although my review unit did not have one.

Given the flawless performance of the feeder on my 7280, I predict that the 8180's will function just as well.

The 8180's appearance has been updated. Whereas the tall and chunky 7280 had a control panel that was festooned with buttons, and a keypad, the 8180 is low-slung and streamlined. With no built-in fax, there's little need for a keypad, as its bigger LCD screen is used for controlling almost all functions. The 8180 is wider, due to the CD/DVD burner on the right side.

Software install is generally easy, although HP presents an excessive number of reminders to register the unit, and sign up for various emails that'll drive you crazy. It's not possible to complete the installation process without having the installer get the last word in by launching your web browser and teleporting you to the HP registration page, even though you've already screamed "NOOO" as loud as you can.

Once installed, you'll get the usual complement of HP applications allowing you to scan to OCR, scan pictures, or make copies. A standard installation includes HP Photosmart Studio, which is a jack-of-all-trades (yet master of none) program to manage your scans and photos. iPhoto or Adobe Photoshop Elements will far better serve Macintosh users. HP includes ReadIRIS 11 for optical character reading. ReadIRIS is a capable program that deserves its own review.

During the setup, you select your connection method. I tested USB, and network (Ethernet) connections. I did not try the Bluetooth capability. HP advertises that Bluetooth will allow printing from a cellphone. I had no problem connecting the 8180 to my 801.11g wireless network. With the printer located only a few feet from the base station, network throughput was not an issue. However, a USB connection is always faster than a network connection, and that's most noticeable when scanning.

After the installation is complete, the 8180 goes through a time-consuming and somewhat noisy setup and calibration process. If the 8180 does not get regular use, the unit will occasionally spring to life, as it checks for proper calibration. If you even so much as open the lid to gaze inside, the printer goes through its 45 second or so "Printer preparation in progress...do not interrupt" routine.

HP's scanning software is reasonably easy to use. Scanning is controlled via the HP Device Manager, a small application that allows access to the various 8180 functions. You can scan to Preview, or save an image file to disk for editing with any image editor of your choice. If you don't have a capable editor (there's no excuse not to), the scanning software allows for choosing the desired resolution, color adjustment, scratch and dust removal, and restoring faded colors. I found the color restoration feature worked well. I could do better in Photoshop Elements, but HP did a creditable job nonetheless.

To my non-programmer's eye, the scanning software appears the same as for the 7280. The 8180 scanner specifications say it's a 96 bit scanner, while 7280's scanner is 48 bit. One would think the 8180 scanner would produce a greater range of tones and colors, but I was not able to notice any significant differences. Upon further investigation (lots of point and clicking to discover hidden options) the resolution options setting of the scanner driver for the 8180 maxed out at 48 bits/millions of colors. I was unable to find any setting to allow me to scan at greater than 48 bits. What's the point of having a better scanner if the software won't take advantage of it?

If all else fails, read the manual. Unfortunately, the manual was unavailing. At wit's end, I emailed HP, and got the following answer describing how to enable 96 bit scans. I include it so anyone who ends up purchasing an 8180 does not spend the time looking for this needle in the HP documentation haystack; it's not there (and it should be).

"Launch the HP Solutions Center application. Under Scan Settings / Scan Preferences is a "Quality vs. Speed" tab. On that dialog there are two selections that must be made, (a) scan at maximum bit depth, and (b) 6-color scan. For the 8180 both are necessary to enable 96-bit scanning. That's it. Subsequent scans will be 96-bit."

Bit depth notwithstanding, the scan quality was good.

Print quality was very impressive. This is truly a photo-quality printer. If you use HP brand papers, the 8180 will sense the paper type, and set the printer to take best advantage of the paper type. The 8180 uses five separate inks plus black, each in its own cartridge. In the old days, HP used bigger three color carts, with yellow, magenta, and cyan all in one. If you emptied one color, you had to replace the whole shebang, even if there was plenty of one or more of the other colors remaining. Now, you need only replace the needed color.

The 8180 will print borderless prints up to 8.5" x 11" and it also has a convenient second tray to fit 4" x 5" photo paper.

Front panel controls are a feature of the 8180. At 3.5", the LCD is bigger than on the 7280. While most users will generally control the 8180 from their computer, you can do quite a bit from the front panel itself. You can print from camera image storage cards, print from photos on CDs or DVDs, and make copies.

I made a good number of copies of both paper documents and photos, and the the quality was uniformly excellent. I also tried making a contact sheet of images from my image storage card, and it worked as advertised with no troubles.

One curious feature that you access only through the front panel is the 8180's ability to save images from a camera storage card and save them to a USB flash drive plugged into the 8180's front USB port. This allows you to back up the card without having to use your computer. This worked perfectly.

You can also read from the camera card and burn them to a CD/DVD using the built-in burner. Unfortunately, I could not get the 8180's built-in burner to recognize a blank CD, even though I tried three different types of CD blank. Oddly, I had no trouble using the LightScribe feature of the drive (more on that later).

The front panel allows for basic editing of photos prior to printing. You can fix red-eye, crop, add a border, and do "automatic fixing." These features worked as advertised. I do all my editing on the Mac, but others may not. Front panel editing may be just the feature you're looking for.

LightScribe is a HP-developed technology that allows CD/DVD burners to use inkjet technology to print images on the front of special CD/DVD media. You can burn a DVD of your favorite images, and use the LightScribe-capable burner in the 8180 to "print" your favorite image on the front of the disc. LightScribe does not print a full-color image; it resembles a sepia toned black and white photo.

HP included a sample LightScribe DVD blank. I had no trouble installing the LightScribe printer driver, and then choosing, editing, and printing the image to the front of the blank disc. I was worried that I'd waste my one blank disc, but the process was easy and trouble-free. Given that LightScribe blanks cost more than plain blanks (prices may vary widely), this is a nice way to customize your photo CD/DVD media.

HP 8180 Specifications

Conclusion

The HP PhotoSmart 8180 is very good, but not great, multi-function printer/scanner/copier. The software is typical HP, which is to say it's merely adequate. The large front panel LCD is nice, and the built-in editing features are available to those who who don't want to have to use their computer for a quick edit and print. The 8180 can read almost any type of camera memory card.

I was not able to burn CDs/DVDs, although LightScribe worked properly.

If you need fax capability, this is not the unit for you.

The real reason to buy the 8180 is for its fine print and scan quality. Whether you do 48 bit scans, or delve into hard-to-find settings to enable 96 bit scans, the scanner's output is very good. HP paper sensing is a great feature, and the HP ink technology is outstanding.

rating: 3 out of 5. It's a fine printer and scanner, but you pay a premium for some features you may never use.

Brother HL-2170w 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless & Wired Network Interfaces

2008-07-30T17:34:00.000-07:00

Customer Reviews

Good wireless network printing at good price
This is a good monochrome network laser printer at a good price. The frustration with this printer is in the set up phase. Setting it up was really long and frustrating, but once you know the secret, you'll have no problems. It is so simple, yet so complicated ... .

Another reviewer pointed out -- and I agree -- that as a general rule, it is initially easier to set up a network device using a cable connection. Unfortunately, I was unable to do this at first. I connected directly to the router, but the router didn't see the printer, and the network activity lights on the ethernet port didn't show any activity. This was frustrating. I spent hours and hours attempting different set ups: wired, wireless, all the ways in the manual. Among these was an attempt at "Easy Set-Up" on my Linksys WRT54GS wireless router, which also failed. (Interestingly, the router's Cisco logo, which used to be illuminated, is now no longer illuminated since attempting the Easy Set Up. Why? I have no idea ...). I re-read both the manual and all the different internet posts on this set-up numerous times. The secret is contained in a third reviewer's post.

This worked for me:
1. If you have already attempted an install, UNinstall the drivers. Do this FIRST.
2. Turn off the power to your Brother 2170w.
3. Turn off your Windows Firewall in your security settings (Start>Control Panel>Security Center).
4. Re-set the printer's internal print server!!
- a. Holding down the blue GO button with the power OFF, turn the power on.
- b. Make sure all the LED's illuminate (toner/drum/error)
- c. Release the GO button, then press it seven times in succession
-- i. The manual says that the LEDs should illuminate again, demonstrating the reset was successful
-- ii. My LED's did NOT illuminate again, but the reset was successful anyway
5. Connect the cable between your router and the printer's ethernet port
6. Run the CD
7. Select Wireless Network Setup
8. Select Wireless Setup and Driver Install
- a. initial computer only
- b. for all subsequent computers select Driver Install Only
9. Select Step By Step
10. Select With Cable
11. Make sure that your router detects the printer by illuminating the LED for the selected port when cable connected
12. Look at the ethernet port on the printer and ensure the LED's are illuminated when cable connected
- a. If none of the LEDs are illuminated, go back to resetting the internal print server again (step 4 above)
13. Click Next once your cable is connected until the software detects the Available Wireless Device
14. Follow the rest of the steps from page 23 of the manual (step 10)

When all is done, turn your Windows Firewall back on ...

The printer will work like a charm.

Couldn't Get to Work
I was really hoping this would simplify things here on the home network.

Bottom line: on wired hookup, can see the printer at a given IP, both from the router and the computer. However, the icon for the printer in the system try constantly reports "offline". This is a problem seen on many forums, with no real resolution.

Wireless: faggedabout it. Over WPA, AES, no workie.

I'm sorry I spent 2 hours on a Sunday trying to get this to work, and, that Brother's tech support, apparently, is not available on a weekend, to help troubleshoot.

If the printer is unreliable, i.e., it goes "offline" for no apparent reason, and tech support is unavailable, would I trust this for my important documents, that might be due on Monday?

No way, and no thanks.

I really wish it would have worked as promised, but, I'll be returning this product.

Cheap, fast, wireless.
Bought this printer because I wanted a wireless network laser printer without spending a lot of money. Wireless setup was easy enough, came with step-by-step instructions in the manual, but they were basically unnecessary as the driver disc displays the same instructions on the computer. Print quality is good, print speed is good, unfortunately it misses out on the fifth star because for some reason all of my dialogue boxes appear in german (I think) and have no idea how to change that. (I know i specified "English" during setup)

Couldn't be happier
I've had the Brother HL-2170w for about a month now and couldn't be happier with it. Printouts are fast and good quality.

I love the wireless! I was able to hook it up to my wired network, configure it with my WPA encryption in about 5 minutes. Then moved the printer where I needed it, plugged in the power and everything worked like a champ.

My 3-year old loves being able to hit the blue button and printing configuration pages... although I'm not sure if I like that part or not! :)

I read a lot of people had problems with the wireless, but if you follow the directions that come with it to the letter it'll go just fine, so don't be afraid of that.

Recommended!!

A great inexpensive printer
Setup was a breeze, print speed is fast, print quality is good and the price was right! This is a great home or small business printer.

HP Photosmart Pro B9180 printer reviews

2008-07-29T05:24:00.000-07:00

by Regardt van der Berg | SACM
07 July, 2008

When it comes to photo prints, A3 and smaller, very few printers currently available come close to the HP B9180

This printer first grabbed my attention at last year’s HP Labs in Lisbon, Portugal, and I have been dying to try it out ever since.

What sets this printer apart from almost anything else on the market today is the size of prints it can produce and the fact that it is aimed at a professional market. This means that the colour accuracy and overall print quality are nothing short of superb.

Moreover, I was blown away by the large variety of media that the B9180 can print on. This includes glossy, satin, and matte photo paper as well as film, transparencies, banners, and my personal favourite, canvas (special fabric used by painters).

In fact, at HP Labs last year, I printed one of my best shots from my Portugal trip on canvass and the results were simply out of this world.

Considering that this is an A3 printer, it’s no surprise to find that this printer is large and heavy, but it will be right at home in a studio environment thanks to its curvy features and neat aesthetics.

It’s also not strange to see that this printer makes use of eight ink cartridges to produce its professional quality prints. Apart from the standard colours (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) it also makes use of light cyan, light grey, light magenta, and photo black to produce images only equalled by those produced by photo-lab developers and which cost hundreds of thousands of rands.

Even though this is a professionalgrade printer, it’s still pretty straightforward to install and operate. Its drivers support both Windows and Mac OS and you can hook it up to your PC or put it directly on your network via the built-in network port.

Impressively, the paper output-tray is partly made of metal: this simply emphasises the fact that this printer means business. It also boasts a manual-feed paper slot that can accommodate media up to 1.5mm thick.

Probably the most impressive feature on offer is the internal calibration system. An HP densitometric closed-loop colour calibration integrated into the print head is able to measure the colour values of a test image.

It will then compare these values to that of the values loaded at the factory and it will auto-calibrate should any changes be detected.

During the two weeks that we used this printer, there was very little to find fault with it. It worked like a charm and consistently produced great photos.

While this printer might be a little expensive for home users, it guarantees a quick return on investment for photographers and designers.

HP Color LaserJet CP1518ni Printer

2008-07-29T05:21:00.000-07:00

It's inexpensive but also a lot slower than like-priced models.
HP's Color LaserJet CP1518ni is a low-cost ($400 as at July 11, 2008) color laser printer with a decent design. Compared with such similarly priced printers as the Brother HL-4040CN and the Dell Color Laser 1320c, however, it's a lot slower and has limited paper handling. It's best suited for use in a home or a fairly small office.

In our PC World Test Center tests, the Color LaserJet CP1518ni produced plain text pages at a paltry 11.2 pages per minute and graphics pages at 2.0 ppm or slower. At least the results were pleasing: Text looked black and crisp. Though a little dark, photos looked reasonably natural. Grayscale images were free of the green or pink overtones that we often see. HP's own image enhancement technology, called ImageREt 3600 technology, might have helped here: Among other tricks, it manipulates the size and position of the dot within the usual resolution grid, to give images a smoother, more natural look. (In connection with its use of this technology, HP long ago ceased quoting dots-per-inch resolution specs in favor of the vaguer ImageREt designation.)

Besides being slow, the printer has design and configuration shortcomings. The 150-sheet capacity of its main paper tray is below average. When extended to accommodate legal paper, the tray sticks out the front of the printer; technically, this occupies the same amount of space as the more common rear extension, but it looks odd. Duplex (two-sided) printing is unavailable. The front control panel (with a two-line, monochrome LCD) is unintuitive: There's no clear indication that you must use the 'OK' button to summon the menus. Access doors and other parts feel flimsy or move clumsily. On the brighter side, the Color LaserJet CP1518ni comes with five photo card slots on the front and has an easily accessible side door for accepting a RAM upgrade (maximum 352MB).

As on many low-cost printers, the toner cartridges are low-capacity and high-priced. The printer comes with starter supplies of each color good for 750 pages of output. A 2200-page replacement black cartridge costs $70 (which works out to 3.2 cents per page), while each 1400-page color cartridge costs $65 (the equivalent of 4.6 cents per page).

HP's documentation is thorough. The wordless setup sheet for unpacking and installing the cartridges looks more like a page ripped out of a comic book than something official, but the instructions are clear. The installation routine relies on animated wizards. Inside the printer, illustrated stickers help you perform routine tasks without consulting the manual. The HTML-based documentation is comprehensive without being overly technical. HP's ratings in our recent Reliability and Service survey were average overall.

For individual users or a small office, the Color LaserJet CP1518ni's minimal paper handling and toner supplies are probably adequate. Only extremely patient people will find it easy to tolerate the slow engine, however, especially when similarly priced models are much faster and have better features.

Brother Printer HL-2140 reviews

2008-07-29T05:14:00.000-07:00

by Aniket Kadam

Brother has a longstanding reputation in the world of printers and the new HL-2140 is their latest one. A monochrome laser printer - aimed at both home and office users - it promises low cost reliability and improved looks along with a small footprint. Let's see if it delivers.

Performance

The printer is easy to setup and the instructions are simple enough for anyone to install them. It took under 10 seconds to initialize once the printer was turned on.

Now for the tests,

Font size Printing

A page containing all alphabets of different sizes was printed. Under the medium quality setting it looked remarkably good and the letters had sharp contrast.

Text Print Speed

Entire pages full of black text were next on the list, the first page took over 10 seconds, contrary to the manufacturers claims. However, later on the fast 2.6 seconds per page was impressive and it reached the 23 pages per minute speed.

Presentation Document Speed

A higher resolution version of the above image was printed, in grayscale of course, since it's a monochrome printer, maintaining the 2.6 seconds was required to print even this. The quality is slightly reduced but it's not noticeable unless minutely observed.

Conclusion

Being a monochrome printer, its appeal for the casual home user might be limited. However it is aimed at the home-office user as well. It's a low-end printer, at Rs.5900 it is reasonably stylish and remarkably fast, maintaining 23 PPM consistently. It takes 460 watts while in operation and 80 watts in standby, this is quite high but laser printers do require more power. Luckily it goes into sleep mode in between prints during which it consumes 5 watts. There are two toner cartridges available for this - the Standard Yield TN-2130 and the High Yield TN-2150, which have duty cycles of 1,500 and 2,600 respectively. The drum and toner units are sold separately despite the printer being a low-end model. This is good because you run out of toner long before the drum unit needs to be replaced, so by being able to replace them separately you save on maintenance costs.
The drum unit is priced at Rs.3,925, the standard toner is Rs.1,900 and the high yield one costs Rs.2800. This brings the CCP (cost per page) to Rs.1.59 if you use standard toner and Rs.1.40 if you use high yield cartridges. Overall this is a great deal and one of the better printers around, this is definitely worth your money.

Test unit sourced from: Brother International,Mumbai.

HP Officejet Pro L7680 Color All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier

2008-07-29T05:10:00.000-07:00

HP Officejet Pro L7680 Color All-in-One Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier (C8189A#ABA) Experience unsurpassed productivity with fast color speeds at a low running cost. Reduce time spent waiting for documents with breakthrough color speeds and proven HP performance. HP makes business printing faster and more efficient and convenient than ever, while reducing your operating expenses. Fax, scan, and copy up to 50-page documents easily, using the integrated automatic document feeder (ADF). The ADF eliminates the need to stand by and manually feed your document, saving time for other important tasks. Copy Speed (letter/A4) Black - Up to 35 ppm Draft; 16 ppm Normal; 5 ppm Best / Color - Up to 34 ppm Draft; 15 ppm Normal; 5 ppm Best / Resolution Up to 1200 x 1200 dpi Scan Resolution Optical - up to 2400 by 4800 dpi, enhanced - up to 19,200 dpi; 48-bit color bit depth, 256 grayscale levels Fax Speed 33.6 kbps, 3 seconds per page / Resolution Up to 300 by 300 dpi Photo memory card slots - CompactFlash Type I and II, Memory Stick, Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard/Secure MultiMediaCard, xD-Picture Card 64 MB RAM, 4 MB Flash memory / Processor - 192 MHz Dimensions (W x D x H) - 20.91 x 25.43 x 14.02 inches / Weight - 34.94 lbs HP 1-Year Warranty
Customer Review: “HP” is an abbreviation for “Hard Printing”
Too many others did a better job listing ALL THE FLAWS of this piece of junk, let me contribute my part:

Inconsistent quality, our company installs these in our field offices and everyone one has a unique set of frustrating idiosyncrasies.

ALWAYS fails when you need it the most ! When one of our reps is prepping for their overnight presentation and has to print copies before leaving for the airport….. it always jams, or has ink errors despite the fact the cartridges are new and less than a day old.

NEVER, NEVER, GET A PAPER JAM, because even if you clear it, the HP still reports a Jam error, we had to ship one back for this reason and often have to flush all the factory settings to clear the jam !

Keep a flashlight near it, because the card slots are impossible to discern and it is easy to break an SD card being plugged into an XD Micro slot.

Epson S20 printer review

2008-07-29T05:04:00.000-07:00

The Epson S20 is a run of the mill photo inkjet printer that's inexpensive and portable.

It has neither direct photo printer capabilities nor networking options, but the Epson S20 is a useful A4 inkjet that can also print 6x4in photos.

Although not specifically marketed as a photo printer, the Epson S20 has a solid driver setup that makes selecting the right combination of paper size, stock and inks a breeze.

Epson believes separate inks are more economical than combined 'tricolour' cartridges. Each of the cyan, magenta, yellow and black cartridges costs £5.99 and slots firmly into its clearly marked bay. However, we had to mark down the Epson on the value front because it doesn't supply the necessary USB cable to connect the Epson S20 to your PC.

Once connected and the driver software is installed, you must run the Epson S20 through a guided printer alignment process to calibrate it. After this, the S20 is all set and you can begin printing. The driver allows you to select print sizes from 3.5x5in up to A4.

Simple edits such as cropping and red-eye reduction can be performed using the included Epson Photo Print Software. You can choose borderless or full-page prints as well as adding borders and effects, making the image sepia or optimising specific areas.

We tested the Epson S20's print quality on a range of papers, from plain office paper to standard photo inkjet paper to Epson's Premium Glossy Photo Paper. This costs £11.87 for 15 sheets, which works out at 79p per page (for the paper alone).

The Epson S20 took 3 minutes to print a 6x4in photo and 5 minutes 10 seconds to print the same 17MB photo at A4 on Epson's Premium paper. This was far longer than we'd like, although to be fair the maximum resolution of 5,760x1,400dpi is also a lot more detailed than all except the Epson's SX4000 high-end sibling which costs five times as much.

Most importantly, the results were very crisp and the photos bright with vivid colours. Epson uses pigment-based inks with a protective resin coating to prevent smudging and water damage. We tested the effectiveness of this and found our prints touch-dry as soon as they came out of the printer and no adverse effects when we spilled half a glass of water on them.

Canon PIXMA iP100 Portable Printer reviews

2008-07-28T17:50:00.000-07:00

Most of Canon's PIXMA inkjet printers are desktop machines where, within reason, size and weight aren't problems. There's one area of the market, though, where both these considerations are important and that's portable print. If the printer needs to be light and compact, but still offer good quality output in a reasonable time, constraints on its design are much tighter. The PIXMA iP100 is just such a portable printer and can be used with an optional lithium ion battery, well away from the mains.

This printer is about the size of one and a half Xboxes laid on their sides and is all decked out in silver, apart from black cheeks at either end and a black bar across its top, bearing the Canon logo. Lift the top cover and the front cover, which is held to it by a magnetic clasp, automatically drops down. The top half of the cover extends to provide a reasonable support for A4 paper, which feeds through from the back and out onto the desk in front of the machine.

Physical controls and indicators are simple, with a power button and inset power LED and a feed button with inset paper jam indicator. On the left-hand cheek is a socket for the external power supply and on the right are sockets for USB and for a PictBridge camera.

There's an infrared receiver here, too, so you could beam data across from an infrared-equipped laptop. If you've gone for the version of the printer with the optional lithium battery - £50 extra - it clips on at the back and is fastened by two screws.

Once the top cover has been lifted to form the paper input tray, the top surface of the printer is again a cover and this can be lifted to reveal twin, low-profile cartridges. One of these contains pigmented black ink, while the other holds not just cyan, magenta and yellow dye-based inks, but also a photo black to improve dark shades in photo prints. The cartridges clip easily into place in the printer's head carrier.

Software supplied with the PIXMA iP100 is Canon's usual mix of simple, task-based programs, such as Easy-PhotoPrint and Solution Menu.

We often expect a lower print speed and output quality with a portable printer, but both hold up well against desktop printers in our tests. Our five page text document printed in 45 seconds, giving a text speed of 6.67ppm, and the text and graphics test took 1 minute 25 seconds, or 3.53ppm. While neither of these times is close to Canon's specifications - 15.6ppm and 11.2ppm, respectively - they're not at all bad for a portable machine.

This PIXMA reproduced our 15 x 10cm photo print in 1:38, which again isn't bad when you consider that one of its dedicated SELPHY photo printers recently took 1:16. Prints took exactly the same time when sent from a PictBridge camera, making this a versatile little printer.

Print quality from the single, pigmented-ink cartridge is very clean, almost laser quality, and with only the slightest hint of jagged edges. This would make the printer very suitable for producing quotes or other immediate documentation on the move. Colour graphics are also particularly good for a portable printer. Though perhaps not the brightest of colours, they have good solid tones and excellent registration of black text over colour.

Our photographic test piece came out very well, with plenty of shadow detail and sharp foregrounds, in all the right hues. Colour variations are smooth and there are no obvious dither patterns. Colours are bright, without looking unnatural, and overall photo prints from this portable printer are well up to the standard of its desktop companions.

By now, you're probably wondering where the catch is; it's in the costs. As well as paying up to £200 for the printer and its battery, you also pay a premium for the two ink cartridges. We couldn't find the black cartridge for much less than £12 and the colour one for much under £16. Given that their page yields are around the 200 page mark, this gives page costs of 7.08p for black and 13.48p for colour.

Neither of these page costs is good, with a typical desktop PIXMA, the iP2600, costing 3.02p for black and 8.57p colour, between half and two thirds of the costs from this portable printer.

Verdict

Despite its high running costs, and to some extent the high purchase price if you include the lithium ion battery, this is an excellent portable printer. To those that need to print away from the mains, perhaps in a car or even on-site, in the middle of a field, the Canon PIXMA iP100 produces prints close to the quality of its desktop siblings, at very respectable speeds and with a minimum of fuss. It can even be hitched up as a Bluetooth printer with an optional USB adapter.

Epson AcuLaser M2000 printer reviews

2008-07-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

A mono laser is the often forgotten workhorse. One thing you always get from a laser is the stated print speed, in this case 28PPM, something all but never achieved from an inkjet printer.
This is called a business mono laser -at this stage I was not concerned- but it is small and many home offices would benefit from it. It is 40x37x23cm with all leads inserted, assuming you use the built in paper tray you need no more space than this as pages are delivered face down on top of the unit. It does have a manual paper feed and this with paper loaded would increase the first figure the depth by 20cm. It is cream and two shades of grey so may possibly in some cases just pass the lounge police.

Whatever you ask it to print will do so -along as there is paper- 28 times a minute, this works with graphics as well as text. If you have never thought of a mono laser to print graphics think again as the right images look superb in mono.

Reviews : Laser printers

moreThere are four models, and you can get addional paper trays and should you need it extra memory. So you could have parallel and USB, or network and USB I was sent the latter but the installation is almost the same with you just selecting the connection method when asked. If you purchase extra paper trays that gives four combinations.

So a 'D' at the end gives you the parallel and USB model and 'DN' gives you USB and network. I choose to review it as USB so all my thoughts could apply to either.

Installation is straightforward and quick, you only have to insert the CD and follow the prompts. Unpacking the unit is not even time consuming and removing the various tape probably is the longest job. Unlike some other small lasers the paper tray is fully contained often they stick out the back by 4cm or so. The tray is stated to hold 250 sheets I certainly found this tight and although I did not get any paper jams I was happier with something like half this amount loaded.

There is a manual tray that is by loading paper face down in the area created by lowering the top of the front and extending a tray. This is stated to hold 50 sheets again far more than I would like, you would probably only use it for letterheads or special papers.

Back right is where the USB or network lead goes and back left for power lead. At the rear of the left side is an on/off rocker. On the top right side at the front are three buttons and six LED's but in practice the only time you need to go to the printer is when you turn it on, put paper in or collect printed output, so if you have a cupboard you could put it in there to satisfy the more fussy lounge police. Perhaps easier done using the network option unless your PC is near the cupboard.

The advanced properties box has lots of options including forcing it to print from the manual tray. However for 80% or more of my tests I adjusted nothing and left it on auto select and text and image printing. I tried the various settings but only to prove they did something. It can also print duplex.

Anyone who has a lot of text printing to do can churn out good quality sharp pages 28 times a minute. The first page out after an initial ten second warm up is six seconds and then 28 times a minute. Be it the same page or a huge database the one I use is over 180 pages long. There are two toner capacities 3,500 or 8,000 pages.

Brother HL-5140 Laser printer reviews

2008-07-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

The Brother HL-5140's compact footprint and low price ($200) make this model a good fit for the crowded workspaces and tight budgets of many small offices. If you need high-quality output produced at reasonable speeds, this Brother may be a perfect match.

Like most of the small-office units we've seen recently, the HL-5140 holds 250 sheets in its main paper tray. You can add a second 250-sheet paper drawer, but it costs about $140, nearly three-quarters of the price of the one-drawer printer. Legal-size paper has to run through the manual feeder--a hassle if you use this paper type a lot.

The bin on top of the printer can handle up to 150 pages of face-down output. A rear output tray folds down at the back to provide a straight path for thicker media, such as envelopes. Printing a lot of envelopes or transparencies can be inconvenient, though, because you have to feed them through the pull-down bypass tray one at a time.

In our subjective tests of print quality, the HL-5140 performed superbly. Even small text looked sharp, with closely spaced, clearly separated bold characters. Though we noticed a little banding in the narrow parallel lines of our line-art test, diagonals appeared crisp and solid. Our photo test showed a few dithering artifacts in textured areas, and we spotted some minor banding, but the photo print looked good overall.

We clocked the HL-5140's text printing speed at 12.8 pages per minute--about average--but its graphics printing speed of 7.9 ppm was very good for a small office printer. We connected the HL-5140 to our test PC using its USB 2.0 port.

When we reviewed the HL-5040 (this model's predecessor) last year, it failed to complete one of our standard printing tests due to insufficient memory (8MB). The HL-5140's stock configuration has doubled the the older version's memory to 16MB, and you can upgrade it to as much as 144MB if you expect to print very large documents.

A chart on the front page of the printed Quick Setup Guide serves as a table of contents, leading you through the different installation and usage options. The full User's Guide, included on the software CD-ROM in PDF format, is more detailed. This printer does not support an internal networking adapter, so if you want to share the HL-5140 with colleagues, you'll have to network it through Windows or buy an external printer server (Brother sells its own print servers, both wired and wireless, on its Web site, but some third-party servers cost less).

Upshot: The Brother HL-5140 distinguishes itself with crisp text and respectable graphics. For the price, it can't be beaten.

Paul Jasper

Brother MFC-7840W review

2008-07-28T05:24:00.000-07:00

Brother's MFC-7840W is a multifunction device (MFD) with a monochrome laser printer, copier, scanner, fax machine, and wired and wireless networking. Capable of printing very good quality text and business graphics at reasonably fast rates, the MFC-7840W is a fine choice for offices that work in a black-and-white world.

Setup is simply – once you've powered up the multifunction printer and installed the toner cartridge, you have three connection options: Ethernet, USB 2.0, or 802.11b/g wireless. The USB connection is plug and play, and when we connected the printer via Ethernet, the MFC-7840W automatically appeared on our system.

The device's control panel is well designed and clearly labelled. Three large buttons allow you to choose between the fax, scan, and copy functions. The control panel consists of rubber buttons, and a bright, backlit LCD clearly displays the settings you can choose from.

Disappointingly, the included scanner software doesn't offer flexible scanning options. Though straightforward to use, the software doesn’t allow you to perform a full preview scan. The scanner performs a preview scan on specific parts of the glass based on the document size you select, requiring you to be very precise about where you place your documents on the glass.

The MFC-7840W output had very good results overall, impressing our panel of experts. Text quality in a Word document looked clean and professional, while a printed document containing mixed elements, including fine, curved lines and graphics, also came out very well. However, we did find that the scanner’s output was too heavy on the blues, while a test copy of a Macworld magazine cover lost some details, while shadows lacked detail.

Print speeds were reasonably fast. It took just under 38 seconds to print a ten-page Word document, and 17 seconds to print a one-page Word document. Colour scanning was a bit on the slower side: it took 1 minute and 57 seconds to scan an 8-by-10in photo at 600 dpi.

Review of the Epson Stylus Pro 9800: Its First Year in Retrospect

2008-07-28T05:20:00.000-07:00

by Kirk Economos

It has been a year since the first announcement of the Epson Stylus Pro 9800 printer, the new generation of 44 inch width, inkjet printer from Epson. Like many of the new releases from Epson, the printer was highly anticipated; offered breakthrough new features; and was impossible to get for about 7 months. The initial rush has past, the printers are readily available, and it is time to take a moment to reflect on the good and bad points of Epson's latest printing wonder.

I think there are far fewer negatives than positives, so I will address them first.

You have to perform an ink swap to switch your dark black ink from photo-black to matte black. For a brief time Epson offered the Stylus Pro 4000 which had 8 inks including both the matte black and the photo black, there was no need to swap dark black inks if you changed from photo paper to mat paper. This new generation still uses 8 inks but has added a light light black ink instead of offering the two varieties of dark black inks. The additional of light light black ink has enable the printer to produce finer gradations of tone and finer detail in the highlight area, but having to swap out the dark black inks to optimize printing on photo paper as opposed to matte paper is an inconvenience and an unfortunate waste of money.
There are quirks with the LCD menu on the printer. One in particular, comes up frequently with a message that says "Power Cleaning?" Y or N. Having been prompted many people select yes to this prompt, thereby executing a power cleaning cycle which wastes a good bit of ink and maintenance tank capacity. I have had a number of clients really upset about this situation and I hope Epson will rectify it soon in a firmware fix.
Dark ink density not improved when using matte black ink on matte papers. The new K3 inks made a giant leap forward in providing richer blacks when using the photo-black ink on photo surface types of papers. The K3 matte black ink on matte papers seems not to have improved black density, and some users report that matte black is less dense on matte papers than the previous UCM matte black ink. I find the blacks to be the about the same density as with the previous inks, but had hoped for more from the matte black K3 ink.
Epson designed the new 220 ml ink cartridges to fit inside the ink bays, unlike the previous 220 ml cartridges that stuck out to the point where you could not close the cover. Well you can close the cover with the new cartridges but the new cartridges are pressurized and occasionally arrive leaking. This has led us to always check cartridges for leaks before sending them out. If you are using the new 220 ml cartridges, check them for leaks as soon as you receive them.
A final negative, although not affecting the quality of the printer, was that for nearly 7 months of last year, dealers like myself, that focus mostly on the Epson printer line, had no Epson printers to sell. Epson announced the new printers, stopped supplying the previous models, and was unable to ship the new generation of printer for what seemed an eternity. Our belt was tightened more than a few notches.
That's it on the negatives, so here's some of the positive highlights:

The printer is about 2.5 times faster than the previous generation, but Epson hasn't sacrificed quality for speed. Epson built the new model with a print head that is more than twice as large as the previous print head, thereby more than doubling the speed.
Time consuming and confusing manual nozzle checks and print head alignments have been streamlined and are now carried out automatically, at the touch of a button.
Metamerism and bronzing, which were significant problems with the previous UCM inks, have been virtually eliminated. If you don't know what these are, consider yourself lucky and know that you won't have them with the new printers and K3 inks.
Deeper, richer blacks when using photo-black on photo surface papers. This represents a significant improvement over previous models and inks.
A new advanced black and white mode in the driver that produces stunning black and white prints.
Improved color gamut- not earth shattering improvement like in black density but still a nice addition to the color palette.
In my opinion, the positives far outweigh the negatives and this new generation of Epson Stylus Pro printers will take their rightful place in Epson's track record of award winning, superior value and outstanding quality, large format inkjet printers. Kirk Economos recommends you visit http://www.meridiancyber.com/C_1037.aspx to get an in-depth price catalog for the Epson Stylus Pro 9800 printer.

Lexmark X5470 Multifunction Printer Review

2008-07-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

I have to start out saying that I haven’t been a fan of Lexmark printers and the X5470 Multifunction Printer doesn’t look like it will break that. However, a friend of mine asked me to do a little research on this printer and see if I would recommend it for their kid’s back-to-school needs. What did I discover about this low end printer?

The basic info on the Lexmark X5470 Multifunction Printer is that it is a printer, scanner, fax, and copier all rolled into one, inexpensive, package. The printer uses two ink cartridges, a black one, with a street price of about $20, and a 3 color one that’s about $2.50 more. It includes memory card slots and a PictBridge port.

How does the Lexmark X5470 Multifunction Printer do on it’s primary function, printing? The sample black text pages I saw looked fuzzy as compared to what I’ve seen from comparably priced printers or ones that were just a little more. It was adequate but not outstanding. Color printing was less than impressive with the pictures looking faded and grainy. You wouldn’t want to use this printer to print any pictures you cared much about. Print speed wasn’t all that impressive either.

When it comes to scanning, the Lexmark X5470 Multifunction Printer is in the “just OK” range. It seems up to the task but I’ve seen better performing multi-function printers in this area. It is a flatbed scanner which is nice.

As a copier, the performance of the Lexmark X5470 Multifunction Printer was poor. The copy quality wasn’t impressive and it was quite slow.

One good point about the Lexmark X5470 Multifunction Printer is that it includes built in fax capability. This is important for Windows Vista users since faxing was removed in this version of Windows. Having a printer with fax capabilities is certainly a nice-to-have if you’re stuck with Vista.

The bottom line on the Lexmark X5470 Multifunction Printer is that it is a barely passable printer with a decent scanner and fax capabilities. I would recommend the Canon Pixma series over this printer unless you absolutely had to have faxing.

Lexmark X4550 printers reviews

2008-07-26T23:57:00.000-07:00

The Lexmark X4550 isn’t the cheapest printing device to offer Wi-Fi capabilities (that accolade goes to the juicily priced £60 Lexmark Z1420 inkjet), but it still weighs in at a sub-£80 price that, particularly in light of its scanning capabilities, ought to grab your attention.
Manufacturers are always searching for the next big feature or trend that looks like sweeping across the industry. In the case of printer and multi-function device manufacturer Lexmark, it reckons wireless connections look set to saturate homes and offices across the nation. Cartridges supplied with the machine are the #23 black and the #24 color cartridge; these are low capacity cartridges and should be replaced with high yield cartridges #34 and #35 when they run out. This should improve the running costs to about 5.8 pence per page.
These cartridges have been used in previous Lexmark models and along with the optional photo cartridge #31 is readily available from Lexmark, many high street retailers or from an online discounter like Cartcon.
Wi-Fi aside, the Lexmark X4550 is a solid if slightly uninspirational All-In-One multifunction device. The Lexmark X4550’s maximum printer resolution of 4,800×1,200 is typical of sub-£100 All-In-Ones, although even at its highest quality mode, it never achieves some of the same heights of excellence as some models costing considerably less.
We were never able to get pin-sharp text out of the Lexmark X4550, and even at the highest level, the characters are slightly poorly formed. Performance was reasonably good though, with the middle quality mode running out at a handsome 8.6ppm (pages per minute). On graphics, the Lexmark quickly dropped to sluggish performance levels once past the (actually quite decent) fastest mode. Quality was acceptable, but we weren’t totally enthused by the results.
Setting up Wi-Fi with the Lexmark X4550 is very simple, thanks to the comprehensive (but still reasonably swift) installation routine. The Lexmark even has coloured lights to tell you whether it’s connected and, if not, whether there’s a convenient network within range. In fact, setting up the Lexmark X4550 is, overall, a breeze.
The Lexmark X4550 also works adequately as a scanner, offering very solid (if, again, not stunning) results.
Notebook users shouldn’t underestimate the ease of being able to print from anywhere in the house without the hassle of wires. Running off a couple of prints from the sofa is remarkably liberating, and we can only hope other manufacturers follow suit in due course. Lexmark’s X4550 is not meant to be everything to everybody, but it deserves much credit for providing wireless at such a cheap price.

Lexmark X9575 Professional Wireless All-in-One tops BERTL's Best list for color MFPs

2008-07-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

LEXINGTON, Ky., July 17, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- BERTL, a leading independent test laboratory, has named the X9575 Professional Wireless All-in-One (AIO) from Lexmark International, Inc. (LXK:Lexmark International Group, Inc
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LXK 35.17, -0.72, -2.0%) its 2008 Best Professional Color Multifunction Printer (MFP).
BERTL selected the Lexmark X9575 for its ease of use and superior performance in the 13th annual BERTL's Best awards, which are given to the "best of the best" products that BERTL tests each year.
"BERTL analysts review products to identify the select group of devices that stand apart from the others. While print or copy speeds are important, it is the feature set, functionality and performance that are the key considerations in judging which product is 'BERTL's Best.' Our analysts not only looked at how well a product performed in various real-world settings, but also what specific aspects of the device make analysts stand up and take notice," said BERTL. "The Lexmark X9575 stood out as the best professional multifunction color printer for a number of reasons, including its sleek, compact and contemporary design, image quality that is better than produced by most desktop printers and easy out-of-box wired or wireless network and software suite installation."
The Lexmark X9575 combines wireless capabilities(1), two-sided printing and other productivity-enhancing features intended to help users in a small home office or small business workgroup get more done.
"The Lexmark X9575 is designed to give busy professionals affordable access to high-quality, high-performance wireless printing technology at home and in the office," said Paul A. Rooke, Lexmark executive vice president and president of its Consumer Printer Division. "We are pleased to see the X9575 at the top of BERTL's impressive list of products this year."
The Lexmark X9575 Professional Wireless AIO warranty includes lifetime phone support on a dedicated, priority phone line, as well as Lexmark's Protection Guarantee, complete with next-business-day replacement.(2) In addition, the X9575 ships with high-yield ink cartridges that deliver twice the yield of Lexmark's standard cartridges to help make it easier for customers to be more productive and more environmentally conscious.
The Lexmark X9575 Professional Wireless AIO has an estimated street price of $249(3) and can be found at retailers including Office Depot and Office Max, as well as online at www.lexmark.com .
About Lexmark
Lexmark International, Inc. (LXK:Lexmark International Group, Inc
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LXK 35.17, -0.72, -2.0%) provides businesses and consumers in more than 150 countries with a broad range of printing and imaging products, solutions and services that help them to be more productive. In 2007, Lexmark reported $5.0 billion in revenue. Learn how Lexmark can help you get more done at www.lexmark.com .
Lexmark and Lexmark with diamond design are trademarks of Lexmark International, Inc., registered in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
(1) 802.11 b/g/n wireless network required for all wireless functions. Subject to the range and capabilities of your wireless router and access to electricity.
(2) This limited warranty does not cover accidental damage, misuse, theft or loss. See Statement of Limited Warranty available at purchase locations for details. Warranty availability can vary by product and country.
(3) All prices are estimated street prices in U.S. dollars -- actual prices may vary.
SOURCE Lexmark International, Inc.

Unbiased Review for Canon Cartridge 106 for Imageclass MF6530 MF6550

2008-07-26T23:50:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for Canon Cartridge 106 for Imageclass MF6530 MF6550 then you are in the right place.

Check out this review:

No joke, when I was looking for Canon Cartridge 106 for Imageclass MF6530 MF6550 the other day, I was having one heck of a time finding it online. When I did finally find it, I made sure I bought it quickly. What follows is my review…

I was impressed with Canon Cartridge 106 for Imageclass MF6530 MF6550 plain and simple. When I placed my order, I had in in my hands within 3 days and that’s no joke. The key is looking for a seller with over a 100 feedback rating on Ebay. I’ve even included an Ebay listing to Canon Cartridge 106 for Imageclass MF6530 MF6550 in this review to make it even easier on you.

Anyway, when it arrived, I opened it and was impressed with the solid packaging which insured Canon Cartridge 106 for Imageclass MF6530 MF6550 didn’t arrive damaged in any way, shape, or form.

Overall, my experience was amazing. I hope this helps you make a solid buying decision.

Here are the specific details for Canon Cartridge 106 for Imageclass MF6530 MF6550:

This replaces the toner cartridge that came with your Canon ImageClass MF6530, MF6550, MF6560. or MF6580 multifunction office machine.

I’ve found some Ebay listings that you may be interested in:

Canon MF4690 Laser Printers All-In-One Reviews

2008-07-25T22:21:00.000-07:00

The MF4690 is a compact yet speedy multifunctional all-in-one. I was looking for a printer that had a small footprint, but came with many features that I needed for my business. I tried many HP printers, but the scanning and network integration left me wondering which direction HP was headed. The loss of quality on the latest LaserJet printers pushed me into looking at Toshiba, Bother, and finally Canon printers.

I’ve found that Canon printers are generally little less than HP printers, but the toner is a bit more expensive. The printer engine is similar between the two manufactures (in fact, HP leases the technology from Canon). I believe that Canon’s strategy is selling a cheaper printer and making up for the difference in profits through toner. This ensures that the printer needs to last longer.

After getting this printer out of the box, it was noticeably small in comparison to my previous HP LaserJet 3390. The cartridge is a bit smaller, but it’s should suffice for my needs of 2,000 pages @ 5% coverage. The speed of printing is at 21ppm which is also just fine for my occasional printing. I require most of my printed material to be double-sided so a duplexer was a must.

The MF4690 has some nice features including scan-to-email, scan-to-flash drive, and scan-to-network drive. I tried to configure the device to use my websites email but I was blocked by my ISP from using outbound email ports. I tried Gmail’s secure ports but was unable to get it to work. So for now I just scan in the documents to a flash drive and email them with my computer which has worked out just fine.

Overall, I’m impressed with the quality and size of this all-in-one. It’s a little more expensive then other models Canon offers, but the scanning functionality make it worth it to me. I expect this printer to be a part of my business for quite some time.

Pros: Small footprint. Scan-to-flash drive is fast and efficient. Fast print speeds. Networks well with Macs and PCs.

Cons: Couldn’t get scan-to-email feature to work with Gmail, provides no errors related to my issue. Randomly “calibrates” every 24 hours or so which is something I’ve never seen a black and white laser do. When the toner is low, an “alarm” is consistently on make it difficult to scan in anything or use the printer, it also doesn’t go into energy saver when in “alarm” mode

HP Photosmart A630 Compact Photo Printers Reviews

2008-07-25T22:19:00.001-07:00

The HP Photosmart A630 Compact Photo Printer is one of the best gadgets our family has come across in a long time. It’s really small, lightweight and with it’s built in handle, it’s designed to be portable enough to carry along with you on vacations, at parties or any kind of gathering where you’ll be snapping pics.

The setup on this printer took about 2 minutes. Just unpack it from the box, plug it in, install the print cartridge, put paper in the back and you’re ready to go.

I have to admit that it took me a few minutes to figure out how to access the paper input tray. It turns out you have to lift the handle to see the little place where you can grab the back cover with your finger.

I have 2 different digital cameras, so I was glad to see the slots in the front can accommodate 4 different sizes of memory cards: xD-Picture Card, Compact Flash I and II, Memory Stick and SD, MMC cards. My cameras use CF and SD, so that worked well for me.

The menu on this little printer is a 4 x 8 touchscreen. It comes with a stylus, but I found it wasn’t necessary for most functions. The screen was very response to finger tip touch, which made editing the photos very easy. This was bit different experience than I had with the touchscreen on the Photosmart A826, which responded much better to the stylus.

The menus on this new portable printer were the same as the A826, so there was no learning curve there. Even if you haven’t used an HP Photosmart touchscreen in the past, you won’t have any problems.

The menus are intuitive and easy to navigate. Here are just some of the functions you have access to: frames, captions, albums, freehand drawing, clip art, special effects, photo stickers and greeting cards. There’s also a function that allows you to print still photos direct from your video camera. I haven’t tried that one yet, but plan to soon.

The print quality is excellent and this little guy moves along quickly. The HP literature says you can print a 4 x 6 in as little as 27 seconds, but my 5 x 7 prints took about 45 seconds each.

We liked this printer so much that my daughter plans to take it to her next 4-H special event so each club member can take home their own set of photos. That’s what’s so wonderful about it – instant pictures. No more waiting for someone to email you or get extra prints. It will even operate on battery power, which makes it totally portable.

Like the Photosmart A826, the prints are ready to use as soon as they come out of the printer, a feature that fits well into the pace of my family. J

One last thing I would have liked to see with this package is a carrying case. The touch screen folds down under the handle, but the screen is still exposed. I’d feel much safer carrying it around if it was in a case.

It looks like HP has another winner with the Photosmart A630 !

Epson Stylus S20 printers reviews

2008-07-25T22:14:00.000-07:00

Full Review

22 July 2008 - Epson’s Stylus S20 provides a budget entry point into Epson’s range of borderless printers. Utilising separate DURABrite pigment inks that cost around £5.99 each, the S20 is designed to be an all-purpose printer with photo capability and with affordability at the core.

Set up is simple enough if a little time consuming as the driver and other Epson software is placed on your shared drive. Epson’s Print Utility3 and Epson Creativity Suite are included so you get a few simple tools to play with in terms of creative picture layouts and print options.

The printer is not supplied with a USB cable, so first time buyers beware, but this slots into a port on the back along with the printer’s power cord. Two supports for paper feed and paper delivery need to be inserted into slots on the top and front respectively, they’re not articulated so if desk space is at a premium, this could be a problem as you cannot fold them away.

The black and grey bodywork is a flimsy plastic build but at this price, that’s par for the course (ditto the lack of that USB cable) and once you’ve installed the software (around 15 minutes by the time you’ve aligned the print heads and slotted the separate inks home into their respective colour-coded slots in the print head) and popped paper into the feeder you can get printing.

The DURABrite ink uses pigment encapsulated in special coating to help get better, long lasting print quality and the text print quality is excellent in "normal" document printing on plain paper. Economy print is very grey and is more a draft mode than an economy mode in my view and certainly not brilliant.

Print speeds are a little less inspiring than the claimed 26ppm for black and 14ppm for colour. These speeds are only achievable in the economy modes as I achieved one page of black text in 27 seconds and five pages in 2 minutes and 13 seconds. Five pages in economy mode took just 35 seconds but again, the print quality is not up to much.

For photos, print speeds are tardy to say the least with a Photo quality A4 borderless print taking 6 minutes and 6 seconds. In Best Photo mode, the same A4 borderless print took 13 minutes and 22 seconds, time enough for a brew no less.

Photo print quality is not bad but leaves something to be desired since there are faint but visible lines in the output no matter what I did to rectify the problem. Colour and detail are not bad though and you can be assured of your print’s longevity thanks to those archival inks.

Full Review

22 July 2008 - Epson’s Stylus S20 provides a budget entry point into Epson’s range of borderless printers. Utilising separate DURABrite pigment inks that cost around £5.99 each, the S20 is designed to be an all-purpose printer with photo capability and with affordability at the core.

Set up is simple enough if a little time consuming as the driver and other Epson software is placed on your shared drive. Epson’s Print Utility3 and Epson Creativity Suite are included so you get a few simple tools to play with in terms of creative picture layouts and print options.

The printer is not supplied with a USB cable, so first time buyers beware, but this slots into a port on the back along with the printer’s power cord. Two supports for paper feed and paper delivery need to be inserted into slots on the top and front respectively, they’re not articulated so if desk space is at a premium, this could be a problem as you cannot fold them away.

The black and grey bodywork is a flimsy plastic build but at this price, that’s par for the course (ditto the lack of that USB cable) and once you’ve installed the software (around 15 minutes by the time you’ve aligned the print heads and slotted the separate inks home into their respective colour-coded slots in the print head) and popped paper into the feeder you can get printing.

The DURABrite ink uses pigment encapsulated in special coating to help get better, long lasting print quality and the text print quality is excellent in "normal" document printing on plain paper. Economy print is very grey and is more a draft mode than an economy mode in my view and certainly not brilliant.

Print speeds are a little less inspiring than the claimed 26ppm for black and 14ppm for colour. These speeds are only achievable in the economy modes as I achieved one page of black text in 27 seconds and five pages in 2 minutes and 13 seconds. Five pages in economy mode took just 35 seconds but again, the print quality is not up to much.

For photos, print speeds are tardy to say the least with a Photo quality A4 borderless print taking 6 minutes and 6 seconds. In Best Photo mode, the same A4 borderless print took 13 minutes and 22 seconds, time enough for a brew no less.

Photo print quality is not bad but leaves something to be desired since there are faint but visible lines in the output no matter what I did to rectify the problem. Colour and detail are not bad though and you can be assured of your print’s longevity thanks to those archival inks.

VERDICT
The Epson Stylus S20 provides a low cost entry into borderless printing from Epson but print quality is adequate rather than great but for general print tasks, it’s not bad value.

Canon Pixma Pro9000 Professional Large Format Inkjet Printer (9995A001) reviews

2008-07-25T22:12:00.000-07:00

by: Mr.Inexpensive Printers in Canon Printers, Ink Jet Printer, Printers

Canon Pixma Pro9000 Professional Large Format Inkjet Printer (9995A001) With the PIXMA Pro9000, you’ll discover just how good a photographer you really are. The 8-color ink system opens up your color palette, and advanced software fine-tunes your output. Move up to 13×19 print on fine art papers. The PIXMA Pro9000’s ChromaLife100 system combines the benefits of dye-based ink, Canon photo paper and FINE print head technology to produce long-lasting, beautiful prints. With an 8-color dye ink system, the Pro9000 produces a wide color gamut to achieve vivid coloration and high glossiness. Black and Color Print Resolution - Up to 4800 x 2400 dpi Maximum 4800 x 2400 dpi FINE print head technology High-Speed USB 2.0 Ink Droplet Size - 2 picoliters Buffer/Ram - 42KB Paper Sizes - Letter, Legal, 4x 6, 4x 8, 5x 7, 8×10, 13×19, U.S. #10 Envelopes Paper Handling - Top Feeding (ASF); Front Feeding (Single sheet up to 1.2mm paper thickness) Noise Level (Approx.) - 37 dB(A) in the best quality mode Power Source - 120V AC, 60Hz Professional printer features using Easy-PhotoPrint Pro (Plug-in software for Adobe Photoshop CS/CS2) New printer driver with advanced color controls OS Compatibility - Windows XP, 2000, ME, 98 and Mac OS X v.10.2.8 or higher Dimensions - Width 26.0 x Height 7.6 x Depth 14.0 inches Weight - 30.8 pounds
Customer Review: Pixma pro 9000 makes exellent photos.
Great photos, inks are in seperate tanks, very good b/w photos, easy to use. reliable…so far. The only thing I would like to see is a system that synchronizes what you see on the monitor with the pics this printer produces. Monitor to printer calibration systems are more costly than the printer itself. Rumor has it that if you wait a year or two, this technology will be incorporated into the next generation of printers. We shall see.

Brother HL-2170W printers reviews

2008-07-25T22:09:00.000-07:00

by M. David Stone

If you're in the market for a personal monochrome laser printer or a printer for a small or home office, put the Brother HL-2170W ($150 street) on your must-see list. It's fast, it prints at reasonably high quality (particularly for text), and it's small enough to share a desk with. It even includes both an Ethernet connector and Wi-Fi support as standard.
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The HL-2170W replaces the HL-2070N in Brother's line, adding wireless support and more speed, but keeping essentially the same small size. In fact, it's both lighter and smaller than some inkjets. Since it's just 15 pounds and a compact 6.7 by 14.5 by 14.2 inches (HWD), you can easily find room for it even if space is tight.

Setup is easy, too. Select a spot for the printer, load the toner cartridge and paper, plug in the power cord, and print a test page. If you're connecting to a network, as I did for my tests, you can then connect the network cable and run the automated installation routine from disc. I ran my tests using Windows XP, but the printer also comes with drivers for Windows Vista, Win XP x64, 2000, Server 2003, Server 2003 x64, and Mac OS X 10.2.4 or later.
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When it comes to speed, the HL-2170W lives up to the promise of its 23-page-per-minute (ppm) rating. I timed it (with QualityLogic's hardware and software, www.qualitylogic.com) at a total 7 minutes 30 seconds on our business applications suite. As a point of reference, the more expensive HP LaserJet P1505 is only slightly faster, at 7:09.

On our text tests, most fonts qualified as both easily readable and well formed at 6 points, with some passing both thresholds at 4 points. Only one heavily stylized font with thick strokes needed more than 8 points to pass both tests. Unless you need absolutely top-quality text for desktop publishing or have an unusual need for small fonts, the HL-2170W can handle any text you're likely to print.

Graphics quality is typical for a monochrome laser. That translates to being good enough for any internal business use but a bit below the level I'd insist on if I were trying to convey a sense of professionalism. The two most important issues I saw were visible dithering, in the form of mild patterns, and a tendency for some gradients to look like smudges. I also noticed some mild posterization, with some gradients changing suddenly where they should change gradually.

Photos were good enough for uses like printing Web pages or client newsletters with photos, which is about as much as you can expect from a monochrome laser.

The printer also offers reasonably capable paper handing, with a 250-sheet paper tray and a one-page manual feed slot, so you can feed an envelope or a special type of paper without having to change the paper in the tray. A 250-sheet capacity is more than enough for a personal printer, and appropriate for a typical home or small office. By comparison, the HP P1505 comes up short, with only a 150-sheet tray plus a 10-page multipurpose tray.

A nice touch is a rear exit tray that adds a straight-through path for heavyweight paper—up to 43-pound weight, compared javascript:void(0)
Publish Postwith 28-pound for the standard tray. The straight-through path also avoids the possibility of wrinkling heavyweight paper or envelopes, or leaving a curl in the paper.

By any measure, the HL-2170W offers an attractive set of features for its target audience, with fast speed, reasonably high-quality output, and surprisingly good paper handling. Factor in the low price and it's more attractive still. Even the claimed running cost, at 2.7 cents per page, is a bit below the more typical 3 cents or so for most inexpensive monochrome lasers.

If you print more than a few pages per day, be sure to take a look at the somewhat higher-priced Editors' Choice Samsung ML-2851ND. The Samsung printer is more expensive than the HL-2170W but has a lower cost per page, so it could cost less overall depending on how much you print. That said, the HL-2170W still offers a lot of features for the price—enough to earn it an Editors' Choice as a budget monochrome laser for personal use or for the home or small office.

Lexmark P350 portable photo printers reviews

2008-07-25T22:05:00.000-07:00

Reviewed on 10/26/06 Lexmark's portable P350 photo printer brings snapshot printing into the home, albeit slowly. The $130 printer prints 4x6 photos at a pokey rate but with acceptable print quality for casual snapshooters. Although they cost a bit more, we prefer either the Epson PictureMate Pal or the Canon Selphy DS810, which offer better-thought-out features and faster print speeds.

The white-and-silver P350 is small and lightweight: It measures 9.2 inches wide by 5.8 inches deep by 5 inches tall and weighs 4.1 pounds. The fold-up handle makes it easy to tote around, but the included power cord and adapter put a bit of a damper on the portability. We would like to see an optional battery pack for this printer, but even the more expensive Epson PictureMate Pal and Canon Selphy DS810 don't offer a battery option. On top of the printer is a 2.4-inch color LCD that's mounted on a swivel, which allows the screen to move through a range of about 90 degrees. We like this feature because it lets you optimize the viewing angle for various lighting conditions. The simple control panel features four arrow keys, a check mark button (that is, an OK button), and a back button for navigating menus, plus a button with a palette icon for tweaking images, a one-touch red-eye-reduction button, and a print button. On the back of the printer lives the input tray, which can hold up to 25 sheets of photo paper. The printer accepts various sizes of paper, up to 4x8 inches, which is a somewhat unusual size, at least in the United States. If you were to print a 4x6 image on 4x8 paper, you would get a white border around the image, but if you were to print a 4x8 image from a program such as Photoshop, you could make a 4x8 borderless print on the P350. On the front, there's an output tray, a USB port for flash storage devices or PictBridge cameras, and memory card slots.

You can use the Lexmark P350 as a stand-alone snapshot printer, or you can connect it to your PC. If you're setting it up in stand-alone mode, simply follow the instructions to insert the single tricolor ink tank and plug in the power cable. If you're setting it up to print from a PC, simply insert the driver CD into your PC and click through the wizard.

To start printing straight from the P350, insert a memory card into the appropriate slot or plug your camera or another flash storage device into the USB port. Using the menu, you can print all the photos on the card in one fell swoop, or all the photos taken on particular dates, or a range of photos. If you're feeling more selective, you can scroll through the photos individually to pick images, make adjustments to them, and print the whole batch when you're done reviewing them. Finally, you can view all the photos as a slide show and choose pictures on the fly, though the only adjustments you can make in this case are to turn on red-eye reduction or rotate the image. You can also print all the photos in index form, which lays out 12 images per 4x6 sheet. This turns out to be less useful than it should be: The photos on the index sheet are labeled with their filename, but when you scroll through the photos on the LCD, you only see the photo number. To be truly useful, the P350 should give the same set of information in both places (or better yet, both sets of information), so that you could quickly skip through to the image you're interested in, using the index as a reference, which is something the Epson PictureMate Pal and the Selphy DS810 do.

If you want to make enhancements to the photos, you have a few limited options. For example, you can manually adjust brightness, but not contrast or color tones. You can also crop an image; turn on Auto Enhance; turn on red-eye reduction; apply color effects, such as sepia, antique brown, and antique gray; rotate the image; or add a frame (more on this in a bit). The Auto Enhance feature is a bit opaque: A search through the user guide didn't clarify exactly what Auto Enhance does. We suspect it tries to improve an image, but we're not sure how. When we used Auto Enhance to adjust a few pictures that were too dark, slightly blurry, or badly lit, we didn't see a noticeable improvement. If anything, in one photo, we saw that the printer had reduced a bit of glare on people's faces, but overall, the picture was slightly less sharp than the unenhanced print. Of the three printers discussed here, the Canon Selphy DS810 has the best range of image-optimization choices. Aside from turning on the Canon's general "autoenhance" feature, you can tweak contrast and hue, brighten faces, change color saturation, and perform color balancing. The Lexmark's frame feature is one we haven't seen before: It simply adds one of four frame designs (in 20 colors) to the four sides of your photo. The designs are limited and a bit cheesy; we don't see ourselves using it much.

If you want to print photos on your PC's hard drive, you can print straight from your preferred photo editing program, or use Lexmark's Fast Pics utility, which helps you pick photos and make adjustments to them. Oddly enough, you get fewer photo tweaking options in Fast Pics than you do working straight on the P350. For example, you can reduce red-eye, crop, and "autofix" images, but you can't adjust brightness or add frames. The Epson PictureMate Pal has limited image-enhancement options in stand-alone mode as well, but at least the included imaging software gives you more control over your photos. Once you've connected the P350 to your PC, you can also transfer photos from a memory card to your PC via Fast Pics. By comparison, the Epson PictureMate Pal also lets you transfer photos in the reverse direction. Another alternative is to transfer photos from a memory card to a USB storage device, such as a flash thumbdrive. (The PictureMate Pal doesn't allow for this.)

Like Epson, Lexmark sells a photo kit that includes the single three-color ink cartridge and 100 sheets of 4x6 photo paper. We couldn't find the price on Lexmark's site, but a quick Google search turned up an average price of about $29, or about 29 cents per print. This is in line with the per-print cost for the Epson PictureMate Pal and the Canon Selphy DS810 (not counting the initial cost of the printer, of course).

The Lexmark P350 took nearly twice as long as either the Epson or Canon models to print photos. It printed borderless 4x6 images at a rate of 0.56 pages per minute; the PictureMate Pal managed 1.0ppm and the Canon gave us 1.11ppm. As far as quality goes, it's in the middle of the pack. The recommended paper is neither glossy nor matte like traditional photo paper (though it doesn't have the texture of traditional matte paper). It has a sort of flat look to it that reminds us of magazine prints or postcards; this is neither good nor bad, just different. Still, the images had a nice sharpness, and we liked the printer's color handling better than that of the Epson PictureMate Pal, though it suffered from some of the same graininess. Overall, the print quality should satisfy casual snapshot users.

Lexmark X4650 printers reviews

2008-07-25T21:59:00.000-07:00

First, it’s basically a printer capable of 802.11 b/g wireless printing and compatible with 802.11n. The wireless capability makes it possible to produce top-quality prints for any and every computer within the same shared and secure wireless network. You may also opt to connect it to your computer with a USB cable. Either way, connectivity will surely not be a problem as you will also be guided by the installation software as you set up your printer.
Let’s talk about print quality. Boasting of a 4800x1200 dpi resolution and a printing speed of 25 black pages per minute and 18 colored pages per minute, this printer sure can perform in top form. Not only that, it has PrecisionSense technology that enables it to detect what kind of paper is being used, automatically adjusting the print resolution accordingly. You won’t have to worry about misaligned cartridges, as it automatically aligns cartridges to provide top-quality printing without hitches.
Photo printers are all the rave in the advent of photography enthusiasts; and this printer is certainly up to par. The Lexmark X4650 has slots that can accommodate digital memory cards, and several USB ports for flash drives and digital cameras compatible with the PictBridge application. This level of connectivity enables you to print photos without having to connect to a computer, letting you select which photos you want to print via scan back proof-sheet. You can even manage several photo effects right from the printer itself, like sepia, antique gray, antique brown, and black & white. This printer will produce top-quality prints, capable of printing with 6-colors and having an optional photo cartridge which is borderless in popular sizes.
Aside from being a brilliant printer, this machine also functions as a copier. Featuring 1-touch PC-free copying in both black and color, it is also capable of reducing and enlarging images with a range of 25-400%. Acting almost like a copier in itself, it can handle 1 to 99 copies and borderless copying in the usual photo sizes.
Another brilliant feature is it has a flatbed scanner that can easily handle thick books, paper or boards, performing still with 36-bit color depth and 12-bit grayscale. The software bundled with this machine also enables you to scan printed documents into an editable computerized format. Scanning to PDF format was never this efficient.
Don’t throw out your black Lexmark36, color Lexmark37 and optional photo Lexmark31 cartridges just yet, as the Lexmark X4650 is compatible with these ink cartridges. This printer is all about versatility. It can definitely handle the usual A4 paper and even the Lexmark Photo Paper and Lexmark Premium Paper.
Truly, the Lexmark X4650 does not disappoint. Try it and see for yourself that this machine is the epitome of quality printing and versatility rolled into one, for the price of one.

Alan Wilson has over 10 years experience in the imaging industry and is a director of Cartridge Concept, a supplier of ink cartridges for all Lexmark printers using inkjet cartridges

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Brother MFC-420cn printers reviews

2008-07-25T21:57:00.000-07:00

by M. David Stone

If you don't print, copy, or fax enough in your home or small office to justify an expensive, full-function all-in-one (AIO), but you want one with an automatic document feeder (ADF), standalone fax and copier features, and a network connector, take a look at the Brother MFC-420cn. For just $150 (street), the 420cn will give you all this and more, including the ability to print photos directly from memory cards and to scan to and fax from your PC over a network. (If you don't need the ADF or network connection, check out the MFC-210c, which is otherwise essentially identical.)

The 420cn's combination of features and compact design—at 6.5 by 15.3 by 17.8 inches (HWD)—makes it a good fit for most home and small offices. One potential issue, however, is the limited paper handling (only a 100-sheet capacity maximum). If you print and copy more than about 30 pages per day, continually refilling the tray can turn into an annoying chore. Similarly, the ADF holds only about 10 pages. That limit could also become annoying if you often need to copy or fax longer documents.

Setup is typical for an ink jet–based AIO, with a separate ink cartridge for each of the four colors. More important, network setup is fully automated; tell the setup routine that the printer is on the network and it handles everything for you.

We rated the output quality for text and graphics as good, which in both cases is at the low end of the midrange for ink jets in general. Text is acceptable for most purposes but may be a problem for documents using small type or unusual fonts. More than half our test fonts were easily readable at 5 points and below, but two highly stylized fonts needed 12 points.

Graphics were a mixed bag. Most of the individual graphics pages were very good or excellent. On full-page graphics, however, we saw light bands where the ink simply didn't cover the area fully. The bands were most obvious on two images with dark backgrounds, but a close look showed the same problem on other pages as well. Graphics overall are good enough for internal business use, but the occasional severe banding on a dark background makes them unsuitable for handing out to anyone you want to impress with your professionalism.

Photos earned a rating at the high end of very good, just missing out on excellent. The only issue worth mentioning is that some similar colors blended into each other instead of standing out as different colors.

Performance is the 420cn's most notable weakness. The total time on our business applications suite was 48 minutes 22 seconds, compared with, for example, 21:13 for the Lexmark X3350. For photos, the average time for a 4-by-6 was well over 9 minutes. Even so, performance for most of our test files was in the tolerable range, with a 12-page text file, for example, printing in 4:04.

Call this the wrong AIO for the impatient. But if you print only a few pages a day, you probably won't mind the speed. And, as of this writing at least, you won't find another AIO with this many features at anything like this price.

Customer reviews

mmemoxie
Member rating:
January 4, 2007
This is an excellent all around printer, fax, scanner and copier for the budget minded. I have had Epson's and Canon printers in the past and the Brother MFC-420cn prints just as well, if, not better. Yes, it is made on the cheap side, but, for a home or home office usage, where only a couple of people are using it, it does fine. Over all, I am very pleased with this unit and am glad that I purchased it, retail, for $99. It has the separate ink tanks, which is a plus, in my book, and the replacement cartridges are priced cheaply. You can find some great deals on complete cartridge sets or individual cartridges on the internet and save lots of money.

HP Laser Jet 3050 All in One Printer/Copy/Scanner reviews (White/Black)

2008-07-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

Product Description
Box Contents: HP LaserJet 3050 All-In-One, 250-sheet media input tray, control panel overlay, power cords, ADF input/output support, phone cords, output bin support, Readiris PRO text recognition software, HP LaserJet Q2612A Black Print Cartridge, CDs containing device software and electronic User's Guide.

The HP LaserJet 3050 is an affordable and compact all-in-one that makes printing, faxing, color scanning, and copying easy and dependable. Space-saving simplicity and easy office integration combine in this black & white printer, copier, fax and scanner. Hi-Speed USB port and HP Jetdirect external print server connections

Fax Specs - Fax Resolution - Up to 300 x 300 dpi (halftone enabled) Transmission Speed - 3 sec/page Fax auto redial PC interface (software included) Up to 120 numbers; up to 120 speed dials & 119 group dials Broadcast faxing Fax forwarding Delayed sending Junk fax barrier Polling Distinctive ring detection

Copier Specs - Copy resolution (black) - Up to 600 x 600 dpi Copy settings - Contrast(lighter/darker), reduce/enlarge 25 to 400%, resolution copy (draft, text, mixed, film photo and picture), copy collation, number of copies, paper size Max. copies - Up to 99

Scanner Specs - Sheetfed scanner Scan resolution - Up to 600 x 600 dpi; (up to 19200 dpi enhanced) Bit depth - 24-bit 256 levels of grayscale

General Specs - Feeder Capacity - 30 sheets Max. Input Capacity - 260 sheets Max. Output Capacity - Up to 100 sheets; up to 10 envelopes Paper Trays - 1 tray plus 10-sheet priority slot Media Types - Paper (plain, preprinted, prepunched, bond, color, glossy, letterhead, light, heavy, recycled, rough), envelopes, vellum, transparencies, labels, cardstock Media Sizes - letter, legal, envelopes (No 5 1/2 Baronial through No 11), index cards, postcards; through ADF - 4.13 x 5.83 to 8.5 x 15 Window

Customer printers reviews

Nice printing, never jams, poor Mac support, expensive per copy (2008-02-15)
I've had this printer for nearly a year. Very good quality output, pretty speedy, scan and fax work fine. Super reliable, and out of tens of thousands of copies, I think I've had one jam. That's the good news.

The bad news comes in two types:

1. Mac support is essentially non-existent for Leopard users. Cannot scan without weird work-arounds that you don't want to try. Manual duplex causes every other page to print upside down. The drivers have not been updated for Leopard.

2. The cost of toner is high. You get 2,000 sheets from a cartridge, which costs about $60 (Costco) or more. To make this worse, the printer never gives you warning when toner is low. If you are, for example, printing 50 copies, the toner could run out after copy 2, giving you 48 misprinted sheets that are destined for the recycle bin. Since the sheets exit face down, you cannot see this happening until it is too late.

I've been trying to find a highly-rated equivalent printer (laser all in one) that works well on the Mac, and when I do, this 3050 will be gone.

Brother P-Touch PT-1650 Label Printers reviews

2008-07-25T21:45:00.000-07:00

Brother P-Touch PT-1650 Label Printer

With an easy grip, rubber impact guards and rugged carrying case, the PT-1650 is designed for everyday use in the field and on the go. Whether you are looking to label telecom, datacom or electrical equipment or provide on-the-spot asset management labeling, the PT-1650 has outstanding features - rotated text, easy-swap tape cassettes, bar code symbology, easy to use telecom/datacom templates, built-in telecom and data symbols - provide a unique solution to your labeling needs. This machine also has the ability to print laminated labels with standard adhesive, extra strength or new flexible ID adhesive (for wrapping and flagging). The PT-1650 meets your labeling needs for tough and durable labels wherever you are - even the harshest and the toughest of conditions.

Agfa AP2300 photo printers reviews

2008-07-25T21:43:00.000-07:00

The Agfa AP2300 may look slightly dated, with its dark grey and white fascia, but this compact, but heavy, unit produces excellent prints.

A 2.4in LCD screen pops up and can be adjusted to make photo previews easier. The unit accepts SD, MS and MMC memory cards and offers connectivity with PictBridge-compatible digital cameras.

The AP2300 will only print 6x4in images and comes with paper and ribbon for just five prints. So you’ll need to factor in the £29 it costs to buy a pack containing extra ribbon and 150 sheets of paper.

Like all these direct photo printers, setup is easy. Once we’d connected it to a power outlet, we needed only to install the ribbon, insert paper into the carrier and then attach this to the device using the pull-down door on the front of the printer. Once turned on, its LCD screen prompts you to insert a memory card or connect a camera.

Four-way navigation keys let you browse images and apply red-eye removal. A separate menu button takes you through settings and lets you add effects, borders, text and clip art. You can also select the number of photos per sheet, adjust image size and printer margins. To while away the time, Agfa even includes printable Sudoku grids.

The AP2300 doesn’t give you much time to twiddle your thumbs, however. We found it took 30 seconds to ‘preheat’, after which full-bleed images appeared in just 39 seconds. In fact, our only gripe was that it is slightly noisier than other models we tested.
Verdict

The combination of speed, available effects and price mean we were thoroughly impressed with the Agfa AP2300. We had to mark it down for value given the parsimonious media pack Agfa supplies – otherwise we’d recommend it.

Carrie-Ann Skinner

Lexmark X2650 3-in-1 Inkjet MFP

2008-06-16T17:31:00.000-07:00

Lexmark is a more all-in-one machines in different than any other manufacturer and they start at a very affordable price. The X2650 comes less than £ 40 and Lexmark correctly refers to it 3-in-1, because it is not a memory card slots, or by fax. These core functions may be all you need, even though, straightforward printing, scanning and copying at home.

The X2650 contains Lexmark’s new design of the system, and its gray-edged, wraparound look. The main body of the machine is a white, in which the paper feed trough folding up the rear and the power of the tank from sliding off the front. The essence of the design is its great simplicity, and it is more aesthetically pleasing, our eyes anyway, than the boxy look at recent offerings.

The control panel is composed of eight buttons and one-character display that shows the numbers of one of the nine show the number of copies set. There are buttons on a black and color copies, cancel the job, and the paper feed and devoted to one of 15 x 10cm photocopies. SCAN button is a double-width, bigger than either a copy of the buttons, which is a little odd.

The X2650 uses two cartridges, one black and one tri-colour, which the clip into the color-coded with the holders of the carrier. It is just one of the ink capacity of each cartridge available, but both are available in standard or Return Program cartridges. The Return Program, which is about 10 per cent cheaper, as long as the undertakes to return empty cartridges directly from the company. Both improving its recycling performance, this technology is useful (Lexmark) side-effect of reducing the empty cartridges available in a third-party refilling.

The usual support for a range of software is available from Lexmark CD, including Abbyy Finereader-OCR. You can find the opportunity to install each of the items separately, so you do not need to download a light-duty versions of applications, if you have something more suitable for a pre-installed.

Most printer makers are now to provide a web-printing services that form the Internet site, so that you do not lose information on multi-framed himself. Lexmark includes a browser toolbar to do so. (via)

HP’s Handheld sp300 All-in-One scanner/printer brings cyborg revolution to warehouses everywhere

2008-06-16T17:25:00.000-07:00

Make your mobile devices work harder–not your employees. Next time a package rolls down the line, your crew can scan it, send data wirelessly, and then print a label or message directly on the package with one simple, portable device.

Sound revolutionary? It is. In fact, the HP Handheld sp400 All-in-One is the first and only scan-and-print solution to integrate a 2D barcode imager, inkjet printer and wireless communication in one device.

Standout benefits
• Hands-free, mobile device increases your labor productivity
• Lower operating costs
• Save up to 1/2 the cost of thermal labels
• Eliminate paper waste by imprinting on documents

As managers race to turn their warehouse workers into cyborgs, HP is there to help with its Handheld sp400 All-in-One scanner / paperless printer of arm-mounted doom. This strap-on contraption is a wireless scanner / printer / barcode manager that turns warehouse drones into human intake and inventory machines. To be fair, the sp400 does have some benefits, like not requiring thermal labels and a reduction in paper waste with its built-in document imprinting function. Most importantly, though, be sure to see the video at the read link -- you'll be wishing you too could work in such an efficient warehouse!

[Thanks, Sonya]

Printers Reviews; Epson Stylus D92 Inkjet

2008-06-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

June 13th, 2008
What a colour printer, you can expect £ 30? If this is the Epson Stylus D92 is a good basic design produces four-color printing with four ink cartridges for potentially good economy.

You probably do not expect anything unusual in a machine that small entry-level price and supply Epson is the embodiment of the traditional design. With a supply of paper almost vertical stripe on the back for a clip on the plate at the front - there is no possibility of this curve when the printer is not in use - there are few opportunities to jam.

Only two buttons are present, a switch to the printer on and off and the other to deal with changes cartridge, and the only connection to the outside world is a USB connector on the back. Even in the low cost of printing, even if Epson has managed to turn the power on the printer, so it’s not painful black box below the headline around the table.

Canon Pixma iP4500 Photo Printer Review

2008-06-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

Canon Pixma iP4500 - Single Function Photo Printer
£79.99

The Canon Pixma iP4500 is a versatile photo and document printer that offers digital camera owners extra functionality, quality and high speed photo printing. This printer is competitively priced and you certainly get a great deal of printer for your money.

Photo printing
The Canon Pixma iP4500 produces superior quality photo prints with fine detail and smooth colour gradations, thanks to tiny 1picolitre ink droplets and a high 9600×2400dpi maximum print resolution (on suitable media). The 5 Single Ink system includes a dye-based black that brings extra depth and contrast to photos. You can print photos directly from your PictBridge-ready digital camera or camcorder and the Pixma iP4500 can print a 10×15cm borderless photo in as little as 21 seconds in Standard Mode. You can also apply Red Eye Removal, face brightening and more with the image editing software included with the printer.

Document printing
The Pixma iP4500 is also an extremely capable document printer. Print documents perfectly at up to 31pages per minute in mono or 24ppm in colour, single or double-sided. Whether correspondence, business paperwork, homework or web pages, this printer handles it all. Other useful features include automatic double-sided printing which helps cut paper costs and two paper trays to hold photo and plain paper.

Print on CD and DVD
With the iP4500 you can personalise inkjet-printable CDs and DVDs by printing straight onto the surface. Use the CD-LabelPrint software to create exciting layouts by adding text and images.

Single Inks
All 5 Single Ink tanks can be replaced separately, minimising ink wastage and maximising savings. A smart LED light flashes to alert you when a colour is running low or needs replacement.

Product Features and specification

Maximum print resolution - 9600 x 2400 dpi
Borderless 10×15 photo print time - 21 secs
Maximum borderless print size - A4
Number of cartridges - 5 individual inks
Connectivity - USB 2.0
Direct printing - Via Pictbridge
Preview monitor - None
Alternative media - CD/DVD printing
Duplex printing - Automatic duplex printing
Document print

HP Photosmart Pro B8850 Printer

2008-06-12T03:56:00.000-07:00

Review: HP Photosmart Pro B8850
HP photo inkjet offers archival quality images at moderate price
by Rick LePage, Macworld.com
May 15, 2008 11:03 pm0 Comments 9
The entry level of the archival-quality photo printer market is heating up right now, with the simultaneous release of Epson’s Stylus Photo R1900 () and HP’s Photosmart Pro B8850. HP’s entry is a lower-priced version of the Photosmart Pro B9180 (), offering that model’s very good print quality and strong features (with a few intelligent omissions) at a lower price.

Product:
Photosmart Pro B8850
Rating

Pros
Very good print quality, especially on matte and fine-art papers; produces neutral black-and-white prints; supports thick fine-art media; long-lasting prints on HP media; good software utilities.
Cons
Glossy prints show some bronzing; slower than comparable photo printers.
Company
Hewlett-Packard
Price as rated
$550
OS compatibility
10.3 (Panther), 10.4 (Tiger), 10.5 (Panther)
Processor compatibility
Universal

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Set-up
The B8850 is a large printer, weighing nearly 40 pounds. It has a 200-sheet paper tray and a single-sheet, manual-feed tray with a straight paper path, both of which are capable of handling paper from 3.5 by 5 inches up to 13 by 19 inches. It uses eight individual high-capacity ink cartridges, with separate black inks for photo and matte paper types, a light gray ink for black-and-white printing, and the standard complement of cyan, yellow, magenta, light cyan, and light magenta inks.

In addition to the ink cartridges, the B8850 also requires installation of four printheads; but, under normal usage, the printheads should last the life of the printer.

Print quality
The B8850 uses the Vivera inks and cartridges found in the B9180; as a result, prints made with the newer model are as good as those from the original. On all media types–glossy, semigloss, matte, and fine-art papers–the B8850 produces high-quality prints that have broad tonal range and look true to life. When comparing prints on similar paper types with the R1900, some viewers felt that the B8850 prints were a bit cooler than those of the R1900, but the differences were minimal, and easily correctable.

HP Photosmart Pro B8850

On glossy papers, the B8850 exhibits some bronzing, especially on images with large areas of little or no ink on the page. On HP’s Advanced Glossy paper–the company’s preferred glossy media–this can be a bit unsightly. If we hadn’t seen the glossy output from the R1900, we would have said that the B8850’s glossy output was quite good, but the Epson printer does a much better job in this category.

Where the B8850 does have it over the R1900 is in black-and-white printing. The HP model produces great black-and-white photos that are rich and detailed, with no visible color cast on most paper types. They’re close to the quality you get with Epson’s $800 Stylus Photo R2400 or $1,200 Stylus Pro 3800 (), although those printers use two gray inks in addition to the photo or matte black inks, which gives you slightly more tonal range and shadow detail than you’ll get with the B8850 (or the B9180).

The B8850’s print life should also be quite good. According to Wilhelm Imaging Research, prints using the B8850 and many of HP’s glossy and fine art papers should last for nearly 275 years when framed under glass, and approximately 200 years unframed. This is among the longest lifespans of any of the printer-ink combinations Wilhelm has tested.

Extra features
As the archival printer market has grown, so have the choices for alternative papers from different manufacturers (see Printing on unusual surfaces), and HP wisely recognizes this by letting you automatically add new paper types–and their associated ICC color profiles–directly to the Settings menu in the Print dialog box. This feature debuted with the B9180, and nearly three years later, no other printer manufacturer makes it as easy to print on alternative paper types without jumping through hoops.

The B8850 also comes with a nice suite of utilities for managing the printer, including a Dashboard widget that displays the current ink levels in each cartridge and a basic application for printing photos (although most people who purchase the printer will probably have a photo program such as Photoshop CS3, Lightroom, Aperture, or iPhoto that they will use for their printing needs).

HP includes a number of smart utilities for managing the B8850, including a Dashboard widget that displays the current ink levels.

While the B8850 shares a lot of features with the B9180, there are a few missing items in the lower-priced model. The B9180 has an Ethernet port, which is handy for using the printer in small workgroups; a front-panel LCD that lets you manage the printer without a Mac; support for HP’s Postscript RIP; and a higher thickness threshold–1.5mm vs. 0.7mm–with media in the manual feed slot. Few of these omissions will matter to the B8850’s target audience of amateur digital photographers, who we think will much prefer spending less money to get the same print quality as the B9180.

Performance
There’s a lot to like with the B8850, but it’s not the speediest printer in its class. In the standard print mode, the B8850 printed a 4-by-6-inch photo in 75 seconds, an 8-by-10-inch photo in 156 seconds, and a 12-by-18-inch photo in 309 seconds. Printing at the maximum print quality resulted in speed decreases of 30 to 42 percent on average, but the only printer in this class that is slower than the B8850 is its predecessor, the B9180. Both Canon’s Pixma Pro9000 and Epson’s R1900 were at least twice as fast as the B8850 in default print mode, and on average 70 to 90 percent faster at maximum print quality.

The B8850 comes with high-capacity ink cartridges, which means more printing before you run out of ink. In our tests, we printed more than 200 photos–mostly 8-by-10-inch prints and larger–before we ran out of any ink. That’s great, but it’s also worth noting that the HP cartridges also cost more, so you don’t get a great price break with the larger capacities. (You will pay roughly similar amounts per milliliter for ink from any of the other major printer manufacturers.)

Macworld’s buying advice
The Photosmart Pro B8850 isn’t a radical shift from HP’s initial entry into the pigment ink printer market. HP wisely chose to whittle the right features from the B9180 to create an affordable, entry-level printer for photographers looking for archival-quality prints. While it lacks some of the glitz of Epson’s Stylus Photo R1900, the B8850 is a strong offering with very good print quality on most paper types and the best black-and-white printing capabilities of any printer under $800 that I’ve tested. If the R1900 were not available, the B8850 would without question be the printer to buy. The R1900’s glossy photo quality definitely outshines the B8850’s, but if you want black and white, the B8850 is the better choice at this price.

HP Color LaserJet 3600n Printer

2008-06-12T03:53:00.000-07:00

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Product Details:

In today’s competitive business environment, color is an essential component to success. That’s why you need a tool that can easily and effectively help you promote your business and increase profits. HP can provide you with just that tool - the HP Color LaserJet 3600 Printer series. Produce vibrant colors and realistic images on a variety of HP color LaserJet papers with HP’s system of enhanced color technologies including new HP ColorSphere toner with patented additives. Create reports, presen Color LaserJet 3600n Printer Up to 17 ppm Black/Color, 100-sheet multipurpose tray and 250-sheet input tray for a total of 350-sheet input capacity, 64 MB RAM (not upgradeable) and HP Jetdirect Fast Ethernet embedded print server. Using the power of color, small businesses can create marketing collateral quickly and easily and get amazing print. Print speed will vary with use.

HP Officejet H470 Mobile Printer Editors' rating

2008-06-12T03:52:00.001-07:00

The good: Relatively fast; low cost per page; sleek new color scheme.
The bad: Poor-quality prints; glitch-prone paper feeder; dSLR owners will miss the CompactFlash port.
The bottom line: HP markets the Officejet H470wbt to the mobile business professional, but it chose aesthetics over performance. The sleek design and cost-effective cartridges give its rating a slight boost, but the degradation of print quality from the previous model is definitely a deal breaker.
Reviewed by:
Justin Yu
Review date: 4/4/08

Hewlett-Packard recently released its Officejet H470 Mobile Series, an update to its line of portable inkjet printers. The models range from $224 to $314, which isn't cheap, considering the majority of home inkjets cost less than $100. The print quality is also unsatisfactory, which wasn't a surprise but disappointing nonetheless. We wish we could speak better of the H470wbt, the highest-end model in the line, but this new model is an unimpressive update--you'd be better off purchasing its previous incarnation, the HP Deskjet 460c, at a discounted price.

The casing of the Officejet H470wbt is almost identical to the 460c, but this time HP went with a matte black finish instead of silver. Aesthetically, we really enjoy the design of the H470wbt. The corners are contoured and the flaps all neatly fold into the body. When everything is closed, it looks very rugged--if Batman needed a mobile printer, his search would end here.

The printer has most of the necessary ports, like PictBridge USB, standard USB, and a SD/miniSD/MMC slot, but lacks the older model's Compact Flash port. This isn't a big issue since most digital point-and-shoot cameras use SD or Memory Stick media, but users with DSLRs that use CF cards should look toward a more photo-specific traveler like the HP Photosmart A826, that won our Editors' Choice last fall.

The Officejet H470wbt is compact and only slightly smaller than a normal desktop printer, measuring 3.25 inches high, 13.4 inches wide, and 6.45 inches deep. At 4.5 pounds, it's portable enough to fit into a carry-on bag or a briefcase, but you won't want to carry it around all day. The most expensive model in the series also includes a protective sleeve made of vinyl with cutouts for the various ports, but there's no handle or a place to store the cables. There are a total of three models in the Officejet H470 series, and each price jump adds more hardware and versatility. HP omits an IrDA port from the H470s, but if you're dead set on traveling without wires, you can also purchase an 802.11 b/g adapter from HP (since it's not included in the series). To accommodate this option, HP built a network switch onto the back of the unit that's useful for people who constantly travel between their home, office, and remote networks.

Model Price Features
H470 $224 Base printer
H470b $269 Includes external lithium-ion battery
H470wbt $314 Includes external lithium-ion battery, Bluetooth printer adapter, and protective case

The H470wbt's top cover pops open to reveal the paper input. Similar to the 460c, the feeder can only hold 50 sheets of paper, but that's adequate for printing in a pinch and still more than the Canon Pixma iP90v that can only hold 30 sheets. We would have liked to see a foldout corral arm to catch the prints as they're released by the machine, but the H470wbt retains its shallow paper output cover. We also encountered a similar paper handling problem that we had with the 460c--it had a hard time picking up single sheets of 4x6-inch photo paper when a larger stack was loaded into the feed tray. The arm mechanism struggled to recognize the smaller size and tried to "pick up" the larger 8x10-inch size--after several tries, it gave up and a red LED lit up on the control panel. The problem disappeared when we cut the stack in half.

The H470wbt uses two ink cartridges, one for black ink and another tri-color cartridge. HP offers one compatible black inkjet cartridge that will reportedly produce 500 prints for $19.99, averaging 3.9 cents per page. The color cartridge comes in regular (330 prints) and high capacity (600 prints) for $24.99 and $34.99, averaging 7.5 cents or 5.8 cents per page, respectively. These costs are well within the average price and yield for desktop inkjet printers. Still, we wish that HP had an ink-saving feature like the Canon Pixma iP90v that gives you three options for printing either straight black, save black mode, or composite black.

According to our CNET Labs' speed tests, the H470wbt printed 5.51 pages of black text per minute, one full page faster per minute over its predecessor and slightly slower than the Canon iP90v. Presentation, graphics, and photos speeds stayed the same, slightly edging out the competition in presentation and graphics and lagging a few seconds for photos.

Speed test
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Photos (Single Sheet) Graphics (ppm) Presentation (ppm) Text (ppm)
Canon ip90v
0.68 1.42 1.77 6.23
HP Deskjet 460c
0.53 1.89 2.03 4.88
HP Officejet H470wbt
0.57 1.88 2.04 5.51
Note: ppm=pages per minute

We were surprised to find that the H470wbt's prints substantially deteriorated in quality compared with those of the 460c. The 460c showed sharp characters and dark black lines, but our H470wbt printed letters with visibly fuzzy edges and blurred text in larger fonts. Bolded text and light graphics were even worse. Dots appeared on thicker edges and picture outlines looked jagged and marred by long vertical lines stretching across the page. The 4x6-inch test pictures we printed out were smooth, but the colors were flat and lacked saturation, casting a gray shadow over the images. Within the driver settings, HP offers a feature called RLT, or Real Life Technologies, that supposedly helps printed images look more like real life. We found this option to be useful in portraits, but the general quality of our images were poorly rendered, even with HP's Premium Plus paper and high-quality ink sets.

Service and support
HP supports the Officejet H470wbt with a one-year limited warranty. Troubleshooting is also available by phone 24-7 or by e-mail. HP's Web site also offers a host of services, including documentation, drivers downloads and updates, and FAQs.

HP Photosmart C8180 All-in-One Review

2008-06-12T03:47:00.000-07:00

HP Photosmart C8180 All-in-One Review
Reviewed by: Justin Yu

Reviewed on: 12 June 2008

At around £260, the Photosmart C8180 sits in Hewlett-Packard's lineup as one of its most expensive all-in-one (AIO) players. This printer, scanner and copier has a suite of features for the amateur photo enthusiast that includes a touchscreen display, built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth connectivity, a slide scanner and a dual paper feed tray.

Design
The design of the C8180 is similar to the rest of the printers in the Photosmart series, but this particular model has a few notable hardware additions that you won't find in most all-in-ones. Unlike most printers, the C8180 has a swiveled touchscreen that lets you control all the software functions including photo editing, wireless setup and management, and scanning jobs.

The touchscreen eliminates button clutter and frees up the rest of the front panel for simple buttons that control one-touch red-eye removal as well as a few others for start, stop and cancel. The front of the C8180 also has a memory card bay with slots for Compact Flash, xD, SD/MMC and Memory Stick cards.

Features
Although HP flaunts the C8180 as a full-featured AIO for the home and office, it lacks a fax machine and an auto-document feeder that you can find on other AIOs for less money. You'll also notice a unique hardware feature on the front of the C8180: a LightScribe drive that lets you archive your data directly from a USB key or an external memory card to a CD/DVD.

We're not disputing its utility, but we wish HP could've found a way to include the drive alongside an ADF and fax instead of omitting them entirely. In either case, we must compliment HP on the build quality and design of the C8180. The rounded corners and silver/white overlay contribute to its overall appeal; this printer will look great alongside any desk setup.

You have three options for connecting your computer to the printer: wired via the included USB cable, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. We can confidently state that the Photosmart C8180 is the easiest Wi-Fi printer we've used to date. Other printers make you pour through pages and pages of instructions and ultimately force you to set up the connection via an ad-hoc network, but the C8180 distills the process down to a simple pairing between the printer and your computer.

In fact, there are no onscreen instructions; you set everything up through the digital LCD on the faceplate itself. From open box to first print, the entire Wi-Fi setup took less than five minutes.

Another unique feature to the C8180 is its dual paper input tray. This is bound to be one of those "Why didn't we think of that?" headaches for HP's competitors, and it really is genius. The C8180 has two separate paper trays: one for larger A4 paper and another for smaller A6 media. This small hardware addition saves time and desk space by allowing the user to manually select which paper tray will spool from the device, but most of the time the C8180 will choose automatically depending on the job.

The C8180 uses six separate ink cartridges -- black, light cyan, light magenta, cyan, magenta and yellow -- and each has its own dedicated bay underneath the hood. We're happy to see that each cartridge is easily replaceable at a fairly reasonable price. Most cartridges cost around £12, which is reasonable for a photo printer at this price.

HP includes its standard one-year warranty with the Photosmart C8180. HP's Web site also has easy-to-use features including FAQs, driver downloads and troubleshooting tips.

Performance
The C8180 printed much slower in all three of our test categories compared with other printers in the same price range. The discrepancy is most obvious in photo prints -- the HP printed almost half a page per minute slower.

Speed test comparison (in pages per minute)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Photo (ppm)
Presentation (ppm)
Text (ppm)

HP Photosmart C8180
0.66 2.47 4.37
Canon Pixma MX7600
1.24 5.02 7.1
Lexmark x7550
1.16 1.81 5.41

Thankfully, there's more to be said for the HP's photo quality than its print speed. The text documents we tested on the C8180 came out very clear with bright, outstanding colours and dark black lines. The colour spread came out even with zero fuzziness or jagged edges, even at smaller points.

The printer also produced very pleasing A6 photos with accurate colour reproduction in skin tone and an even hue across the page. Some of the lighter colours appear undersaturated, even on HP's own Premium Glossy Photo Paper, but overall these prints will satisfy some of the most nitpicky photo enthusiasts.

Like many of the printers in HP's Photosmart series, the C8180 produces better quality colour scans than grayscales. We noticed a significant amount of compression in the grayscale scans with serious gradation issues at the dark end of the spectrum. This problem is almost nonexistent when scanning colour prints, where we were actually impressed with the level of evident detail and representation.

Conclusion
The HP C8180's photo quality is better than average and the hardware is well-designed, but the lack of an auto-document feeder and painfully slow print speed prevent us from giving this otherwise excellent rating.

HP Officejet J6480 All-in-One Inkjet Multifunction Printer

2008-06-11T06:24:00.000-07:00

A raft of features makes this multifunction printer tempting, despite its middling performance and a few design flaws.

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Melissa Riofrio
PC World
Tuesday, June 10, 2008; 12:19 AM

The HP Officejet J6480 All-in-One color inkjet multifunction printer competes with other midrange MFPs, includingLexmark's X9575 ProfessionalandDell's 968w--and all offer a similar array of features, including integrated Wi-Fi. The J6480 manages to do everything for the lowest price of the bunch, which might help some people overlook its middling performance and quirks.

In our speed tests, the J6480 printed text at a passable 7.3 pages per minute (ppm) and color graphics at 2.4 ppm. The results were only somewhat worth the wait: On plain paper, text looked dark-charcoal rather than the preferred true black, with some unevenness to the edges, while color images appeared a little grainy. HP's own photo paper improved matters--color images seemed a little dark, but natural and smooth. Scans and copies looked a bit fuzzy but quite good.

Multifunction printers in this price range struggle to fit more stuff into a fairly compact case. The Officejet J6480 does a pretty good job with the all-important paper handling. The main input tray holds a voluminous 250 sheets of plain paper, as well as thicker media. The lid of the input tray is also the 50-sheet output tray, with a wide, pull-out extension. An auto duplexer (for two-sided printing) hangs off the back, and a 35-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) sits atop the scanner.

I wish HP had paid as much attention to ease of use. The control panel is clearly laid out and fairly easy to navigate. The power button, however, is the same dark color as its surroundings and sits in the far upper-right corner of the angled main control panel. It lights green when the machine is on, but the user needs to see it before then. The button to activate the Wi-Fi transceiver is on the front of the machine, but the installation documentation neglects to tell you to turn it on if you want to use it; the manual buries that revelation in the troubleshooting section. Finally, though ink levels display on the two-line monochrome LCD, the droplet icons beneath each indicator are the same silvery color--you can't tell which cartridge you're looking at.

Ink costs are just shy of pricey. A 780-page, high-yield black cartridge costs $30, or 3.8 cents per page; the 520-page, high-yield tricolor cartridge costs $35, or 6.7 cents per page.

The HP Officejet J6480 offers a lot of features for the price, but slowness is the primary trade-off. Although HP's ratings in our recentReliability and Service surveywere just average overall, among midrange MFPs this model is still very competitive.

Brother HL-2040 Laser Printer

2008-06-10T19:26:00.000-07:00

Reviewed by: Jeffrey Fuchs
Edited by: Elsa Wenzel
Reviewed on: 02/14/2005 The Brother HL-2040 is an inexpensive, fast, noncolor laser printer for a home or sole-proprietor business. It's decent at printing text, so-so at graphics, and quick at both. As with the similarly priced Samsung ML-1740, what you see is what you get: a nonexpandable 250 sheets of paper capacity and 8MB of RAM. On the plus side, the HL-2040 works with operating systems from Windows 95 through XP and with Macintosh OS 9.1, 9.2, OS X 10.2.4, or higher. It also has a speedy 96MHz processor, plus both a parallel and a USB 2.0 port. By contrast, the Samsung ML-1740 snubs Macs, and it sports a slower USB 1.1 port with only a 66MHz processor.

One of the smallest laser printers we've seen, the Brother HL-2040 is lightweight, with two-tone dark and light gray plastic making it more attractive than the traditional putty color scheme. It stands just 6.5 inches tall, 14.6 inches wide, and 14.2 inches deep and weighs less than 17 pounds loaded with toner and paper. Its main paper tray holds letter- or legal-size paper. You feed envelopes, card stock, transparencies, and label sheets one by one into the manual feed slot in front. On top, you'll find a 100-sheet output tray, tilted to hold the pages on top, next to the control panel.

Controls are ultrasimple: just a round, blue Go button and four LEDs labeled Toner, Drum, Paper, and Ready. The lights flash or glow red, yellow, and green and convey quite a bit of information, such as low toner warnings and error messages. Luckily, setting up the HL-2040 is easy. In the printed quick-setup guide, instructions are well laid out and easy to follow; there's also a user manual and a flash movie guide on CD-ROM.

Unfortunately, the HL-2040 ships with a starter toner cartridge rated to last a mere 1,500 text pages. You'll get an estimated 2,500 pages out of a regular, $60 toner cartridge, which brings the cost per page of text to 2.4 cents, about average for a modest laser printer.

The Brother HL-2040 lacks built-in networking capabilities. To push the envelope, you can buy external networking add-ons such as the $180 NC-2100p print server, or the $250 NC-2200W wireless print server. But to network, you'll save money going with the $199 Brother HL-2070N, which has 8MB of RAM more and comes with a built-in Ethernet card.

In CNET Labs' speed tests, the HL-2040 nimbly printed 16.5ppm (pages per minute) of text and was almost as fast at graphics, a mite over 16ppm--impressive numbers for a $150 laser and faster than the Samsung ML-1740.

The HL-2040's text prints were good in our tests, although more charcoal than black. Still, the letters were legible and sharp enough for everyday business documents, forms, and letters. Graphics, however, looked only fair; the printer failed to differentiate between dark shades of gray, which blended into black. The output also suffered from vertical banding in horizontal gradients, and a blotchy sheen showed up where pure black should have been.

Epson Stylus Photo 2200

2008-06-09T22:33:00.001-07:00

The Stylus Photo 2200 - A Photographer's Dream Machine
The Stylus® Photo 2200 is the ideal printer for those wanting the same longevity in their digital prints as conventional film prints. We all love the snappy colors and low costs of our inkjet printers but the real truth is that those prints just aren't going to last as long as "real photos." Epson's answer is the Stylus Photo 2200 with the new, seven-color UltraChrome pigment-based archival inks. (At the time of this review Epson is the only manufacturer to offer pigmented ink photo-quality printers.) Now you can achieve the same color range, density and saturation of dye-based inks and get superior fade resistance. Color prints made on Epson Watercolor Paper are light fast up to 80 years and up to 44 years on Premium Luster.

The Stylus Photo 2200 is an excellent choice for serious amateur or professional photographers and is affordably priced at $699 ($200 less than the 2000P.) The Stylus Photo 2200 with UltraChrome ink has faster printing and drying times enabling the printer to achieve a print speed of four minutes for an 8" x 10" photograph on glossy paper - that's three times faster than the Stylus Photo 2000P. Speed and connectivity is ensured with high-speed USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 (FireWire) interfaces as well as a bi-directional IEEE 1284 parallel port.

The printer's resolution of up to 2880 x 1440 dpi comes from ultra small 4-picoliter droplets, which produces an equivalent dot size to a two-picoliter dye-based droplet. Epson's exclusive Micro Piezo ink jet technology creates incredible detail, beautiful skin tones and an ultra-wide color range that is ideal for all types of photography. The interchangeable black inks allow users to choose between the printer's standard Photo Black cartridge and an optional Matte Black cartridge. With a large printable area it can handle from 4" x 6" up to 13" x 44" cut sheet papers with ease. It also features 4", 8.3" and 13" edge-to-edge borderless printing on roll paper. A roll paper holder, an automatic cutter assembly and a print catcher basket is included.

A variety of glossy and matte papers are compatible with the Stylus Photo 2200, including Epson's Premium Semigloss Photo Paper, Premium Luster Photo Paper, Premium Glossy Photo Paper, Watercolor Paper and Enhanced Matte (formerly named Archival Matte) Paper. The newest paper that is available is Epson's Velvet Fine Art paper. This new paper is a 100 percent cotton, acid free paper and is available in both Letter and Super B (13" x 19") sheets. Thicker media is easily accommodated by the manual paper feed and its straight-through paper path.

The Stylus Photo 2200 includes EPSON Software Film Factory with PRINT Image Matching support. PRINT Image Matching technology (P.I.M.), which Epson announced in February 2001, ensures that P.I.M.-enabled digital cameras and P.I.M.-enabled printers work perfectly together to create the best possible prints. Included in the software bundle is a PIM file plug-in for Photoshop 6, 7 and Photoshop Elements 1, 2.

Stylus Photo 2200 Features:
New 7-Color UltraChrome™ archival inks in individual ink cartridges

Improved matte quality with optional Matte Black ink cartridge

2880x1440 dpi resolution with ultra-fine 4-picoliter droplets

Fast print times: 8x10" image: 2 min. 6 sec. on matte paper, 3 min. 51 sec. on semi-gloss paper

Borderless photo printing: 4x6" 5x7" 8x10" 8.5x11" 13x19" and with roll paper

Roll paper holder and automatic cutter assembly

Epson PRINT Image Matching (PIM) technology ensures that digital cameras and Epson printers work together to produce the best possible prints

USB 2.0, FireWire (IEEE 1394), and Parallel connectivity

Light fastness rating of up to 80 years on Watercolor and other Fine Art papers. 44 years on Premium Luster, Glossy and Semigloss media are currently being evaluated by Wilhelm Imaging Research.

It comes in a rather large box! You'll find everything you need in there except for a connecting cable. Can someone please tell me why they can't include at least a standard $2 USB cable with these printers? Not a problem for us "city folk" but for those out in the country it could be a real pain to have to order and then wait for the UPS man to deliver a cable. If you don't have the necessary USB or FireWire cable then be sure to order one -with- your printer.

Initial setup isn't much different from other inkjet printers except there's now a few more ink cartridges to install. The Stylus Photo 2200 uses seven ink tanks; Photo Black (or optional Matte Black), Light Black, Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta and Yellow.

In front of the ink cartridges is a line of red LED indicators that are visible when the top is closed. When an ink tank runs out the corresponding red LED lights up. The ink levels are constantly monitored and you will get a software popup warning when the ink is getting low, the red LED tells you that it's now empty. We'll cover this in more detail when we explain the software driver options.

The interchangeable black inks allow you to choose between the printer's standard Photo Black cartridge and an optional Matte Black cartridge. The Photo Black ink supports any type of paper, the Matte Black ink supports matte paper only. The printer "knows" which ink is installed and automatically limits your choice of media types in the driver software.

The Matte Black yields higher density and contrast on matte papers and is ideal for matte fine art photography. It also produces superior B&W prints on matte paper.

And here's how the printer "knows" which ink cartridges are in the printer and exactly how much ink is left in them. There are tiny little electronic chips on the edge of each ink tank. This allows you to swap any cartridge at any time and then put it back in the printer later. These IntellidgeTM cartridges actually count each ink droplet used to keep track of the ink remaining.

Compatible with both Windows and Macintosh platforms, the Stylus 2200 features built-in IEEE 1284 bi-directional parallel and high speed USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 FireWire ports.

Epson's Velvet Fine Art, canvas and other "thick" fine art papers can be fed straight through thanks to the manual paper feed in the rear. The manual paper path supports a variety of media up to 1.3 mm in thickness.

Here's the roll paper holders mounted on the back of the printer. Shown here with a 4-inch roll of photo paper. The printer handles 4", 8.3" and 13" width roll paper stock for edge-to-edge borderless printing. The roll paper is fed into the manual feed paper path which automatically pulls the paper up to the start point. You push and hold the roll paper feed button to make it "back out" the roll paper when you're done.

The automatic cutter assembly and print "catcher" basket mount on the front of the printer. It's an easy and fairly quick change from cut sheet to roll printing. You do need to go into the printer driver and properly adjust the cutter and select the desired cut option (auto, paper-saving or manual cut.) The manual cut function is enabled by a button on the front of the printer. The cutter even has a built in cleaning function to keep things moving smoothly.

I can't recommend the use of the 4" wide roll paper as these prints never seem to sit flat again. These prints here were under a heavy book for three days and yet still retain almost as much curve as when first printed. The roll paper is nice for making wall-size panoramas but for borderless 4x6" prints, stick with the cut sheets.