THE NEWS IN PRINT

There was a time when the printer industry was a two horse race (maybe three) and everything about printers seemed boring and mundane. Enter Kodak as a rookie and things hot up a bit for all other competitors. Prices slashed, offers revamped but most importantly there’s a sense of competition hotting up. Every tech writer wants to throw in his bit into this new-found race.

Edward Baig feels that there isn’t much to choose from between HP and Kodak printers. Here are some observations from his experience:

• Both printers are white and have similar physical dimensions
• Neither printers come with a USB cable
• Only the Kodak has a “PictBridge” port that lets users print directly from a digital camera
• Kodak has a 3-inch display for reviewing and doing light editing of photos before you print them, larger than HP’s display for the same purpose
• HP has a built-in networking feature which is not present in Kodak
• HP’s photo print quality is much better than that of Kodak
• Printing speeds cannot be compared as both printers print at different speeds with different paper
• Paper jams were observed in the Kodak printer with mid-grade paper
• The photo tray in Kodak is hidden under the printer which hinders fluent operation
• Special Kodak feature: You can load three pictures on the glass and the printer will automatically detect and place each into separate files on your computer

Here’s my favourite part, the conclusion: I welcome Kodak’s return to the inkjet market. Whenever industry rivals try to one-up each other, the winner is inevitably the consumer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.