THE NEWS IN PRINT

Canon, the company that produces the World's best photo printers released two more photo printers into the European market. They introduced Pixma IP3500 and IP4500, both reasonably priced but the output is excellent as always. An additional feature is the faster printing of text prints and photos.

IP3500 Features

- Print photos up to 4800x1200dpi, borderless 10x15cm in 47 sec.
- Print documents, mono and colour, up to 25/17ppm
- Print from PC & digital cameras
- 2 paper trays
- 4 Single Inks
- Photo editing software incl. Auto-Image Fix

IP4500 Features

- Print photos up to 9600x2400dpi, borderless 10x15cm in 21 sec.
- Print documents, mono and colour, up to 31/24ppm
- Print on CD/DVD
- Print from PC & digital cameras
- Print double-sided
- 2 paper trays
- 5 Single Inks
- Photo software incl. Auto-Image Fix

It's a great advantage to have single cartridges on any printer; they avert users from buying excess ink for the sake of some empty ones. These printers have a cartridge level alert that alerts the user when the printer is running low on ink. All good photo printers these days have a LCD screen which allows users to view photos or run through the menu for printing. Absence of one in these two is astonishing and it makes me wonder if the designers just forgot to put one on it. Another notable absence is the memory slots.

The IP3500 is priced at £50 while IP4500 has a price tag of £65. The prices are reasonable considering the quality and speed of prints. But, we all know that the price of printer doesn't matter anymore, it's the cartridge. Canon cartridges are known to be expensive. If the cartridge prices can come down, Canon photo printers will most definitely be the most ideal ones available in the market. They need to learn a thing or two from Kodak regarding pricing.

This week seems to be the printer week; tons of printers are getting introduced in the market by multiple manufacturers. Wireless technology has taken the front seat and USB and Firewire will be discarded in a few years to come. Lexmark wants to press home the advantage by introducing a new line of wireless printers aimed at SOHO (small office and home office). Earlier this week, it announced the arrival of X6570, X7550 and X4850 wireless all in one printers.

"Lexmark's new all-in-ones deliver business-class productivity with the added advantages of wireless to help busy professionals get more done quickly, easily and affordably,"� said Paul Rooke, Lexmark executive vice president and president of its Consumer Printer Division.

These three printers have some great features which is helpful for consumers as well as the environment. Duplex printing is a common feature in these printers which saves paper and eventually the environment. Prints are fade and smudge resistant and borderless photo prints are claimed to last for at least a century. They have all the bells and whistles that any other photo all-in-one printer would have.

The X6570 and X7550 are priced at £75 while the higher model X7550 has a price tag of £100. The X7550 features a faster print speed over the other two. All three are due to be released in September of 2007.

Sometimes, I feel that there are too many printers to keep track of. When I got started with computers, there was at the max 5 models and they were known to everybody just like movie actors. These days, there is no way anybody can even remember their printer numbers let alone the company that manufactures them.

via Press Release

Epson earlier this week introduced two all-in-one photo printers that is meant to increase productivity and quality at homes and small offices. Epson claims that these two printers offer more features, better quality and durability than other competitive printers in the market.

Epson Stylus CX7400 Features

- Up to 28 ppm black/colour
- 4" x 6" photos in as fast as 27 sec
- Fast speeds, whatever the task
- Amazing prints on plain and photo paper
- One standard ink set for all your prints
- PC-free printing from cameras/memory cards
- Individual ink cartridges
- One-touch copying, high quality scanning
- Multiple color copies quickly and easily
- Perfect photos automatically

There are a few enhancements in the CX8400. It has a 2.5"� tilting LCD for photo and menu viewing. It prints at a speed of 32ppm for both colour and black and 26ppm for 4"�X6"� photos. CX8400 can reduce and enlarge documents from 25% to 400%. Auto photo correction guarantees that all your photos are perfect all the time.

Both printers have PictBridge port on them which is a common feature among all other photo printers in the market today.

Epson has reasonably priced CX7400 at £35 and CX8400 at £50. Printing companies cannot fool consumers anymore with low printer prices; as we all know that the price of printers don't matter anymore, but the price of ink cartridges does.

Zink imaging, the Massachusetts based company had unveiled their mobile printer that uses no ink cartridges or toners at a convention in California few months back. This printer will be made available in the market around December of 2007.

Zink plans on releasing two devices during the same time. The first one is an integration of a 7 mega pixel digital camera with 3X optical zoom and a mobile printer that can print photos on 2"� X 3"� thermal photo paper. It is also releasing a mobile printer that works with other devices like digital cameras and cell phones through Bluetooth technology and USB.

The integrated camera printer has a 2"� LCD screen on it for previewing images. It can take input from SD cards alone. The mobile printer has a rechargeable lithium ion battery in it. Both these devices are an upgraded replacement for Polaroid cameras.

The camera printer has a price tag of £100. It's a reasonable price for a camera with high resolution and an instant printer. This printer uses thermal photo paper which has an estimated retail price of £0.85 for a pack of ten sheets.

via Printer Info

HP photo printers are not as popular as the Canon ones. Its quality and printer features have never been matchable with Canon. HP photosmart A516 is a new portable photo printer which is compact size and reasonably priced.

The A516 has a print speed of 45 seconds for black and 92 seconds for colour. Its connectivity is through USB, PictBridge, memory cards and optional Bluetooth. It's a thermal inkjet printer which has an option to run on lithium ion batteries. Once fully charged, it can last up to 4 hours.

The picture quality is far from perfect and not comparable to other photo printers. Prints look grainy up close and black levels are not deep enough. This tri-colour cartridge printer produces rich and accurate colours though. Printing speed is awfully slow which is a huge disadvantage.

The printer has a 1.5"� LCD screen integrated on it. The menu system is unfriendly as it takes you back to the top level menu after every setting change. Settings options cannot be accessed if the memory cards are inserted. Lack of thumbnail view makes it hard to browse through pictures if they are in plenty.

The A516 is priced at £40. The cost of the printer may be cheap but the ink cartridges are expensive as they don't use dye sublimation technology.

There are better portable photo printers in the market if you are looking for one. This one is ordinary at the most and avoiding it wouldn't waste a tear.