Kodak: We’re the cheapest cost-per-page photo printers on the market! Look, here’s a whole bunch of independent research proving it! Nya-nya!
Hewlett-Packard: NUH-UH! You’re a big fat liar, Kodak! We’re the cheapest cost-per-page.
Kodak: Pfffft!
Hewlett-Packard: Stop it! I’m telling! Hey CrunchGear! Kodak is being mean!!
CrunchGear: What? Huh? Don’t make me stop this car!
Full disclosure: Hewlett Packard’s PR team asked us to compare the HP C6380 against the Kodak ESP 7 with the intent of showing HP’s superior quality, in addition to evaluating the cost-per-page comparison. No gifts or money were given to me. I didn’t get to keep the printers, only the photos I printed out.
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Sorry for the double CrunchDeals right in a row, but you might want to move quickly on this deal because it probably won’t last too long. Dell is selling its tiny Wasabi photo printer for just $29, down from $149.
Canon has also released some PIXMA all-in-ones and SELPHY compact photo printers. Real winner is the ES40, a $149 printer that looks like a child’s radio. The best part? It talks to you!
Canon SELPHY ES40 Compact Photo Printer
The Canon SELPHY ES40 Compact Photo Printer is the latest addition to the SELPHY line which has become synonymous for producing high-quality photos, being portable and easy-to-use. The SELPHY ES40 is ideal for printing images of a child’s first birthday or a loved one’s retirement party which can be distributed to attendees for a keepsake as they leave. The voice guidance system, large 3.5-inch LCD screen and Easy Scroll Wheel allows for printing and navigating through menus and images to be more intuitive than in previous models. Users will now have more opportunities to personalize their photos with new frames and clip art available under the Creative Print function as well. The estimated retail price of the SELPHY ES40 Compact Photo Printer is $149.99.
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So that fake USB Chainsaw from the other day is indeed fake. Hence the fakeness. It’s instead an eye-opening ad campaign aimed at educating the public about the wastefulness of printers.
There are a couple of different opinions floating around right now on how to best measure the cost of printing with an inkjet printer when it pertains to the ink. In these tight economic times, determining that cost has everything to do with how often you need to replace “consumables” like ink and paper.
In 2007, Kodak began its aggressive “Print and Prosper” campaign, which claimed that consumers could save “up to 50 percent” on ink costs while using Kodak’s inkjet printers compared to printers from other manufacturers. There is even a Kodak site complete with an “overpayment calculator” that presents the savings you could earn by going with one of their printers.
HP, as expected, did not take such claims from a rival lying down. To combat what it called “misleading information,” HP aimed to debunk Kodak’s claims through its own campaign, which it calls “The Truth Behind Printing”.
While students everywhere are preparing to rock the F out this summer, HP has just announced its line of back-to-school notebooks — a cruel reminder to you kids that summer is short and you should always be focused on studying and using your indoor voices.
Do you see that USB port right there? You know, the one on the back of my D-Link DIR-825 802.11n router? Well apparently Mac users can now use that port to share things like USB thumb drives, printers, etc, using D-Link’s SharePort software. . (Windows users have been able to do this for some time.) Well, theoretically Mac users can now use Share Port, seeing as though the installer refuses to work on my pre-unibody MacBook. Why would it be easy, right?
Cheap color printing has long been the holy grail of grade-schoolers everywhere*. As you well know, Dad or Mom usually has a copier at work. This copier, at least in my day, was used to make multiple copies of hand-drawn comic books. These comic books are then sold at school for five or ten cents each. If those grade-schoolers parents had had a color copier, however, the entire situation would change. They could sell the comics for 25 cents.
That’s why Xerox’s new color copier is so great. It uses cubes of solid ink and half-page of color would cost about three cents – down from the standard 8 cents or so for most other printers. That is, of course, ignoring the fact that the machine will cost $20,000.
Printers are boring! OfficeMax has a color laser printer for $130, though, which is NOT boring since color laser printers normally go for a bajillion dollars.
As if it weren’t enough that we have useless features on our point-and-shoots, now we have to have them on our printers as well. First of all, the idea of taking my photos, editing and adjusting them, doing red-eye reduction and so on in-camera, then printing them out on the spot is so ridiculous that I can’t even convince myself that it’s done by anyone on this green Earth. A screen on the printer seems so superfluous a feature, and such an expensive one, that I can’t believe it is being touted as a positive. Enjoy slideshows on your printer! It sounds like a fake ad. Nevertheless, these crimes against nature will be available from Sony in April.
Here’s Mattel’s “Barbie Digital Nail Printer” due out in August for an undetermined price. Which design will I choose for my own nail? Find out after the jump…
Ask any geek of a certain age and predilection what they dreamt of back in high school and they’ll say, in order, a date to the prom and a color laser printer. Now that everyone with $100 and a pulse can get a fairly nice inkjet printer, Samsung is offering the CLP-315, a $184 color laser printer that is about as big as a standard all-in-one printer but with the added benefit of printing at high speeds and in vibrant color.
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I’m not one to get overly excited about the technology behind transportation logistics (or am I?) but this thing from HP looks pretty cool. It’s basically a handheld wireless-enabled barcode scanner that can also print quick-drying ink directly onto boxes.
So if you work at, say, UPS, you scan a box coming in, that info is transmitted wirelessly to your warehouse servers, and then you print another barcode or “FRAGILE” or some other message onto the package itself, all in the blink of an eye.
Check out this video to see it in action.
[via Treehugger]
When I took on the task of reviewing printers I worried that I’d be so bored that I’d fall asleep at the keyboard, leading to a review full of jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjllllllllllllllllllllmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm and a keyboard full of slobber. Luckily, the Epson Artisan 800 kept me awake and excited and, dare I say it, enthused about the state of printers.
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Canon today unveiled two more multifunction models to their printer line, PIXMA MP480 and the PIXMA MP190. Both printers combine the capabilities of a scanner and a printer into one unit.
The PIXMA MP480 is expected to street around $100, while the PIXMA MP190 will be available for $70.
Round up of specs after the jump.
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Hewlett-Packard has two new inexpensive photo printers in the $149 Photosmart A630 (seen above) and the $99 Photosmart A530. Both printers are capable of printing out photos up to 5×7 inches in size, which should please those of you who find 4×6 photos to be pedestrian and boring now. The A630 also features a 4.8-inch touchscreen, which is pretty large for a compact printer.
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Don’t expect this new ink to be hitting a printer near you any time soon, but I found it reassuring that the companies in charge aren’t just sitting back and letting the cash roll in. They are, in fact, hard at work on new ways to make money. The latest advance is this gel ink, which, not being water-based, will keep its place and shape on nearly any surface.
There’s already printing on nearly every surface you can see, but you’ll find they’re often coated in something, or actually covered in a vinyl, or wrapped in a thin layer of special plastic. This new ink will cut out the middle man and allow them to print directly onto foil, untreated cardboard, and so on — the way they like it. It’s still “in the research phase” but it looks real enough. Looks kind of sinister, actually.
In the interest of making printing even easier, Canon will release or has released the Selphy CP770, a bucket-shaped printer. The printer, says the presser, should make printing fun for the “whole family.”
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Hold on to your hats as we blast face-first into the whimsical world of laser printers! Samsung has announced the world’s smallest laser printers. That’s right, plural, as in two of them! I don’t know, Samsung. They still look kinda big, unless those girls are both in kindergarten and sitting on a tablet of Advil.
Anyhoo, the CLP-315K (pictured on the right) does 16ppm black and 4ppm color at 2,400 by 600 dpi and the CLX-3175FNK (pictured on the left) handles scanning and faxing. It’s got a USB port that allows you to scan directly to USB memory sticks. Cool.
Not quite sure about prices or availability yet, unfortunately.
Here’s an interesting development: Kyocera is building a new KJ4 series print head that can print at 150 meters per minute at 600×600 dpi, which equates to about 1,000 sheets per minute. Check your box for your current printer’s speed and be amazed.
The head should go into printers next month. Kyocera uses ceramic piezoelectronics to make this 4-inch head squirt out ink faster than a squid at a calamari festival. Sorry for that last joke. It’s early.
