THE NEWS IN PRINT

Canon has had a history of great quality and exceptional clarity in its output. But, the history will remain a highlight and the present not too bright for Canon. Their recent entrant, Selphy DS810 has all the glamour attached to it but no taste in the pudding. This compact photo printer spits out low quality images despite having several good features. If the print quality is no good, the rest becomes redundant.

The beautiful looking Selphy DS810 is tiny at 9"� X 9"� X 4"� and takes over a minute to print a 4"� X 6"� photograph. Industry average speed is around 40 seconds. Decent sized 2.5"� LCD screen allows users to view pictures before they are printed. An inbuilt image editing software allows users to make image modifications before printing, like red eye corrections.

The order of the day is for printers that can print sans PC and DS810 falls into this category. It can print directly from digital cameras through PictBridge and mobile enough to be carried around. It's rather appalling that such a tiny printer comes without a battery pack considering its strength that revolves around its size.

Canon has been a printer that has produced quality prints for a very long time, but not this one. This one is best to avoid and if you are an avid Canon fan like I am; wait for Canon's future releases.

If you intend to buy this printer, the DS810 is priced at £119 which is nominal.

The king of instant photographs, Polaroid, has found an able and trustable partner in Zink. The tie up between the giants is bound on job nature rather than strategy. The outcome is Digital Mobile Photo Printer which is based on Zink's inkless printing technology and Polaroid's expertise in producing instant photographs.

The aforesaid printer is capable of producing 2"� X 3"� borderless photographs. It can connect to cell phones through Bluetooth and digital cameras through PictBridge and USB port. Users can instantly print photographs by syncing the camera devices with the printer. The printer takes a minute for each print.

The printing is inkless and hence no cartridge hassles. Special Zink photo paper needs to be used. Here's a brief about the technology:

Without ink, ribbons, or even toners, the ZINK printer utilizes a patented paper that changes its color when heat is applied. This is made possible with the dye crystals that were put inside the photo paper. At room temperature, the photo paper looks like any other paper. It's colorless. But when inserted in the printer, the heat that was activated when you start printing releases the shades in the embedded crystals to create a plethora of colors that take the shape of your image.

The Digital Mobile Photo Printer should be made available in the US sometime during August/September this year. The estimated pricing of this product is around £75. The cost per print is around 15p per print.

The video below shows the printer in action. It was shot at CES 2008.

The not-much heard-of printer manufacturer, Kyocera, has introduced couple monochrome laser printers, FS-1100 and FS-1300D. There is nothing flashy about these printers nor any outstanding features, they are basic laser printers that looks compact and feels simple.

Print speeds are on the higher side at 28ppm with the first page taking 6 seconds to print. Networking capability is offered on both models as well.

It offers the best resolution of 1200 dpi which is common with almost all laser printers today. These printers are meant to take higher loads and carries a 250 page input and output trays.

The difference between the two printers is that the higher model, FS-1300D has the capability of automatic duplex printing while the base model doesn't. The printing costs are economical as well for the higher model at 0.736p while the base model stands at 0.995p per print.

This sounds like a neat printer for offices and businesses where printing speed matters the most. The FS-1100 has a price tag of £143 while FS-1300D is priced at £183; slightly on the expensive side though. Both printers are available in the retail market.

via News Release

In the present world, without any speck of doubt, I can confidently say that space is money. More space one saves, that's directly proportional to the money earned. Especially in offices, we see those gigantic, age old laser printers occupying a good portion of the cubicle and nothing is done to do away with it, while offices run cost cutting programmes.

HP might have the answer our enterprises are looking for. HP has introduced the smallest laser printer till date in Laserjet P1005. The size is equivalent to a 15.4"� laptop and sits tidily on a desk, thereby occupying the minimum space possible.

The P1005 is a monochrome laser printer, and is characterized by the new redesigned spherical toner, and claims to produce crisp text and sharper images. It prints at a speed of 15ppm and the first print is out in 8 seconds. It has an integrated processor of 266Mhz and a 2Mb cache memory to speed up printing processes.

With the P1005's small size, comes out a few limitations. The paper feed is compromised and can hold 150 pages at best, which is a big minus at offices.

It does have most of the bells and whistles that laser printers have. The P1005 is new in the market and will take time to be tested and tried in the live environment. On the outset, it looks like a great product but the real value will be out in the next few months. It costs around £65 and is dead reasonable but the cost of print is the real factor that matters.

Printers and 'saving ink' don't go well with each other, plainly going by experience. Printers are always meant to drink more and more ink and place a lucrative tab on the user. Well, HP is set to change the current trend. It has introduced Photosmart D7260 which claims to use ink frugally.

The D7260 is peculiarly different than all other printers in the ink saving domain, which attracts me to it the most. When we hit 'clean printer head', all printers use some portion of the ink to perform the action. The ink used for cleaning printer heads is a goner. With D7260, the printer reuses the ink that was used as a cleaning agent to print documents, thereby saving ink and hence money. This technology has already been used on the previous model, Photosmart D7160.

The printer moreover contains six individual cartridges which once again work in the favour of economical printing. The user can change the colour cartridge which has run out instead of the whole set.

The printing speed is excellent at 34ppm for black and 33ppm for colour. Photo printing speed is unmatchable at 10 seconds per 4"� X 6"� photograph.
It contains all other necessary bells and whistles that photo printers have these days. The D7260 is priced at £50 and is available in the retail market and also off HP store.