Kodak has revealed two all-in-one printers and its new Pic Flick HD iPad app. The Kodak ESP 3.2 all-in-one printer (£79) is the latest addition to the company’s inkjet printer portfolio. “With a refreshed and modern design, it is targeted to photo-centric consumers and families who want great value, quality and simplicity,” Kodak says. “It offers Kodak’s signature easy Wi-Fi set-up and a 6.1cm colour touchscreen for effortless navigation and a better ‘walk up and print’ experience.”

The ESP 1.2 all-in-one printer (£69, pictured) provides consumers with an easy way to print and save. It too offers effortless Wi-Fi set up and a 3.8cm intuitive touchframe interface for quick navigation making it simple to print, copy and scan. Coming in June, the free Kodak Pic Flick HD App for iPad lets consumers create personalised photo cards, collages and prints, with the ability to add captions and speech bubbles. For photo prints, Kodak Technology identifies the colours in the photo and automatically generates matching borders for prints and collages.

London, UK, May 16 – Continuing to offer consumers a no-compromise choice in home printers, Kodak today introduced the KODAK ESP 1.2 and ESP 3.2 All-in-One Printers combining advanced features, quality and affordability. Offering more ways to connect and print from mobile devices, Kodak also revealed its new KODAK Pic Flick HD App[1], which lets consumers create personalised photo cards, collages and prints on an iPad, and send them to their KODAK Printer.

The ESP 3.2 All-in-One Printer is the latest addition to Kodak’s award-winning inkjet printer portfolio. With a refreshed and modern design, it is targeted to photo-centric consumers and families who want great value, quality and simplicity. It offers Kodak’s signature easy Wi-Fi set-up and a 6.1cm colour touchscreen for effortless navigation and a better ‘walk up and print’ experience. The ESP 1.2 All-in-One Printer provides consumers with an easy way to print and save. It too offers effortless Wi-Fi set up and a 3.8cm intuitive touchframe interface for quick navigation making it simple to print, copy and scan.

With Kodak’s leading image science technology and proprietary pigment-based inks, consumers get sharp text documents and brilliant photos that dry instantly, are smudge, water and fade resistant, and last a lifetime[2], along with the lowest total ink replacement cost[3] and lowest average cost per page in the industry[4].

Consumers can print on the go from their smartphone, tablet or computer using Google Cloud Print and KODAK Email Print Service[5]. Kodak is now offering consumers the ability to customise their printer’s email address. Consumers can also save time with additional advanced features like smart sensor technology that predicts supplies and time needed to complete a job and automatically adjusts printer settings based on paper size and type.

“Our newest printers and mobile app speaks to Kodak’s commitment to deliver a print experience that meets the needs of today’s consumers, whether they are at home or away from home,” said Bob Ohlweiler, Vice President and General Manager, Consumer Business KODAK EAMER. “The new ESP 1.2 and 3.2 printers offer the value and ease you would expect from KODAK, with no trade-off on quality and performance. When it comes to printing photos, Kodak’s vision is to deliver solutions that make it easy and fun to print personalised photo products at home. With this in mind, the new KODAK Pic Flick HD App enables customers to print straight from their iPad and thus do more with their photos”.

Coming in June, the free KODAK Pic Flick HD App for iPad lets consumers create personalised photo cards, collages and prints, with the ability to add captions and speech bubbles. For photo prints, KODAK Technology identifies the colours in the photo and automatically generates matching borders for prints and collages, perfect for framing.

The Pic Flick HD App joins the KODAK Pic Flick App for photo printing from smartphones and tablets[6], the KODAK Document Print App for ANDROID devices[7], and the KODAK Photo Collage Print App on FACEBOOK, the first of its kind on the site.

Kodak has also introduced a useful new service in the UK to help people save even more time and money when it comes to replacing ink. Kodak’s new ink subscription service means you never have to run out of ink again, as you can schedule an automatic delivery of ink straight to your home monthly or quarterly. Shipping is free and an email notification alerts customers seven days prior to shipment, enabling you to cancel, defer or change shipping options easily.

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The new Xerox Phaser 6700 colour printer, with speeds of up to 47 pages per minute (ppm), is not only fast, but also handles complex jobs with ease, saving customers money by using less energy through patented Xerox technology.

“The Energy Star-qualified Phaser 6700 combines fast performance and exceptional reliability with accurate colour quality, making it ideal for small and medium-sized businesses and large workgroups alike,” says Ernest Leong, OPB product manager in the Xerox division at Bytes Document Solutions, the Xerox distributor in sub-Saharan Africa.

“The printer offers 2400x1200 dpi resolution and “Color by Words 2.0” – an interactive technology that leverages common, everyday words to help users describe intended colour output.”Leong adds that the Phaser 6700 colour printer raises the bar when it comes to print quality, performance and reliability. “You get exceptional print quality plus incredible performance, with a colour and black-and-white print speed of up to 47 ppm.”

To keep the busiest workgroups productive, the 1.25GHz processor and standard 1GB system memory handle a steady stream of complex jobs with ease. The 120 000-page monthly duty cycle supports the heaviest office print volumes.
Other key features include:

* Xerox's patented EA-Eco toner, which has a lower fusing temperature, reduces power consumption by up to 20% and CO2 emissions by up to 35% compared to conventional toner.

* Security features, such as Secure Print, along with free standard and built-in support, keep sensitive documents secure.

* The Print Around feature keeps work flowing by moving jobs ahead of stalled documents in the print queue.

* A colour touch-screen interface that makes walk-up operation fast and easy; embedded videos provide quick troubleshooting assistance.

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The latest in a run of new multifunction devices, the Canon Pixma MX515 is another reasonably stylish but extremely versatile model launched from the Canon stable. The Canon Pixma MX515 is not the smallest of MFDs, partly because of the 30-sheet ADF built into the top. This works particularly well with the scan, copy and fax facilities – the Canon can also use the convenient memory-card slot to handle copying photos from a compatible card.

The ADF forms a plateau on the top of the Canon Pixma MX515, surrounded by borders that slope down pleasingly. The control panel is rather busy, with a multitude of buttons plastered across the front. These are rather boldly marked, if very easy to use. Accompanying this is a 2.4in colour screen. The latter is a little pale, but still fairly attractive. It’s not touch-sensitive, and you still have to use the many buttons to navigate a slightly limited set of menus. See also: Group test: what's the best printer?

The control panel is intuitive though, and while the need to resort to buttons sometimes overcomplicates the process, the Canon Pixma MX515’s user interface is not exactly cutting-edge but easy enough to use.
Many an inkjet compromises on the paper feeding mechanism, but the Canon Pixma MX515 remained pleasingly robust throughout testing. The input feed is quoted for use with up to 100 sheets. We think this might be pushing it a little, but the Canon could comfortably take at least 80.

The top-mounted ADF relegates the main output feed to the base of the Canon Pixma MX515, and finished prints are ejected from a space just above the input feed. As it happens, the paper holder is substantial enough to prevent sheets from getting mixed up with those in the input tray, and the MX515 was generally flawless in operation. The Canon Pixma MX515 includes 802.11b/g/n wireless facilities along the more standard USB 2.0. Crucially for a printer that in part targets an office audience, the MX515 also supports ethernet for wired networks. It can even be tweaked to offer Bluetooth, with the purchase of an optional adapter.

Canon Pixma MX515: Performance
As a scanner we found the Canon Pixma MX515 to be another highly capable model, with decent attention to detail, and a good range of colours. The Canon Pixma MX515 sees something of a first in our printer testing – its fastest real-world text speed of 9.7 pages per minute was identical to the figure officially quoted. Admittedly this text isn’t of the highest quality, with many smudged characters and banded text. The middle mode comes at a still reasonably zippy 8.1ppm. Banding is eliminated, although the text was still a little fuzzy overall. The lettering is nice and bold, though not as much as it is at the highest quality mode of 1.9ppm.

Even here, the character definition is slightly uneven: the Canon Pixma MX515 isn’t a great text printer.
Auto duplexing is supported, although the drop in speed is quite significant. Should you want to print double-sided pages, you’ll find the top speed of 9.7 falls to a sluggish 4.7ppm. This is rather slow and means that few users will want to leave auto-duplexing on.

The Canon Pixma MX515 fared better on graphics. The fast and middle modes hit the relatively competitive speeds of 3.2 and 2.3ppm respectively. In the medium mode the rather level-headed colour palette strikes a nice balance, not too intense and glowering, but neither is it overly bright. At the highest quality level, the results on photographic paper are very polished.

As with the MG4150, the Canon Pixma MX515 has surprisingly affordable running costs of 3p and 4.5p for black-and-white and colour respectively. These are very good figures that see it providing rather more value than, for example, Canon’s i-SENSYS LBP-7010C. The Kodak Hero 5.1 remains better value still, though, with that printer’s 1.8p per text page proving particularly hard to beat.

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Epson America has been named the official inkjet printer sponsor of Audubon magazine's fourth annual photography awards. In association with Nature's Best Photography Magazine, the contest is open from May 16 through Sept. 5, 2012, for professional-, amateur- and youth-level photographers. Winners' photos will be featured in the Jan./Feb. 2013 issue of Audubon and in Nature's Best Photography magazines, and the winner of the amateur division will win an EPSON Stylus® Photo R3000 inkjet printer.

Audubon's photography awards result in more than 10,000 photo entries each year. Entries are reviewed by Audubon's photo editor, Lila Garnett, Kevin Fisher, design director for Audubon, and Steve Freligh, editor and publisher of Nature's Best Photography, before finalists are determined. Winners will be announced later this year.

"The goal for Audubon's photography contest is to inspire photographers of all levels to think beyond their skill level and creativity," said David Seideman, editor-in-chief of Audubon magazine. "We feel strongly that in order for photographers to be successful in expanding their skill set, they need the right tools. This partnership with Epson demonstrates our commitment to motivate aspiring photographers with the tools they need to bring their creativity to a larger platform."

Designed for professionals and serious advanced amateur photographers, the EPSON Stylus Photo R3000 draws from the advanced technology of EPSON Stylus Pro-series printers to deliver stunning black-and-white output and vivid color prints. This printer also includes features such as high-capacity individual ink cartridges, advanced media handling to support a wide range of paper types, as well as Ethernet and wireless-N connectivity. Featuring Epson UltraChrome K3® with Vivid Magenta ink technology, the R3000 produces exhibition quality prints on a wide variety of glossy, matte and fine art papers up to 13-inches wide using advanced media handling capabilities. With its professional control, the Advanced Black-and-White Photo Mode easily creates neutral or toned black-and-white prints from color or monochrome images. Its innovative pigment ink set delivers an extremely wide color gamut with more dramatic blues and violets, while AccuPhoto™ HD2 image technology provides smoother color transitions along with better highlight and shadow detail.

"Epson's innovative, industry-leading printing technology enables photographers to showcase the true color and intensity of their photographs," said Richard Day, group product manager, Professional Imaging, Epson America, Inc.

Audubon is the century-old, award-winning flagship magazine of the National Audubon Society. The bi-monthly publication is targeted toward nature enthusiasts, outdoor adventurers and socially conscious consumers who wish to discover and be inspired by the natural world's extraordinary beauty and diversity.

Epson is a global imaging and innovation leader whose product lineup ranges from inkjet printers and 3LCD projectors to sensors and other microdevices. Dedicated to exceeding the vision of its customers worldwide, Epson delivers customer value based on compact, energy-saving, and high-precision technologies in markets spanning enterprise and the home to commerce and industry. Led by the Japan-based Seiko Epson Corporation, the Epson Group comprises more than 75,000 employees in 97 companies around the world, and is proud of its ongoing contributions to the global environment and the communities in which it operates.

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Canon’s Pixma MX892 Wireless Inkjet Office All-In-One color inkjet multifunction printer (for printing, copying, faxing, and scanning) is suitable for a home or very small office. It delivered good output quality in our tests, and supports both automatic duplex printing and scanning. It's also handsome, solidly built, and moderately fast. Among its shortcomings are an awkward control panel and an absence of high-yield replacement ink cartridges, which other office-minded models in the same price range make available.

Setting up the Pixma MX892 is easy; and the MFP supports USB, ethernet, and Wi-Fi connectivity. You can set up Wi-Fi via WPS, though the 3-inch LCD gives you the option of selecting a network and entering a password to accomplish the same setup. Canon bundles its Solution Menu EX software, a capable package that handles everything from photo albums to scanning. You may push-scan to your computer from the PixmaMX892's control panel or offload scans via USB/PictBridge, Memory Stick, Secure Digital, or Compact Flash media. You may also print directly from media inserted into these ports.

The Pixma MX892's paper-handling features are very good. In addition to a 150-sheet main tray, it has a rear vertical feed that can hold 150 more sheets. Canon also includes an automatic duplexer, and a 35-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) for the scanner. The ADF scans duplex, so you don't have to double-feed two-sided documents by hand. The flatbed scanner is letter-/A4-size, and the lid telescopes to accommodate thicker material.

The Pixma MX892's control panel features a grid of black buttons that, depending on how you use the unit, light up as the okay and cursor keys, or as a numeric keypad. Three function buttons act as shortcuts, sometimes; at other times, you have to use the okay and cursor keys.

The Pixma MX892's performance is quite good. It prints monochrome pages at a sprightly 8.1 pages per minute from the PC, and at 8.3 ppm from the Mac. Snapshot-size (4-by-6-inch) photos print at about 3.2 ppm on plain paper, and 1.9 ppm on glossy photo paper. Full-page photos, printed on the Mac, exit in just under two minutes. Scan and copy speeds are adequate.

The Pixma MX892 uses a five-tank ink system consisting of black, cyan, magenta, yellow, and photo black. The US$16 black lasts for an estimated 339 pages, yielding a cost estimate of US4.7 cents per page. Each color cartridge costs US$14. The cyan, magenta, and yellow cartridges last for anywhere from 486 to 555 pages, and a page with all four colors an estimated cost of around US13 cents. The photo black should last for 666 4-by-6-inch photos, per Canon’s proprietary tests (or contributes a minuscule amount to regular documents). To the Pixma MX892’s credit, these ink costs are cheaper than average for standard-size cartridges.

Given the way the market for small-office inkjets is heating up, however, the Pixma MX892 lacks one key attribute: high-yield inks that offer greater savings for higher-volume use. Both the Epson WorkForce 845 and the HP Officejet 6700 Premium offer high-yield ink choices.

Output quality from the Pixma MX892 has the same warm (and slightly orangey) color temperature that most of the company's printers feature. With most subjects, this imparts a friendly vibe to graphics and photos, but faces and flesh tend to look oversaturated. The effect is more noticeable on plain paper than on glossy paper. Dark areas tend to show more detail than prints do that are made with less expensive Canon printers that lack a photo black cartridge. Text is quite sharp, even in draft mode, though solid areas tend toward charcoal-gray rather than true black.

The Canon Pixma MX892's automatic-duplex printing and scanning are great, as are its sturdy construction, output, and speed. It would nicely serve one or two people who print at a light to moderate volume. Nevertheless, like-priced competitors from Epson and HP offer similar or better features for roughly the same price, with the option to buy high-yield inks.

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SMALL MEDIUM entreprenuers can look forward to a whole new range of printers designed to cater to home office needs by Canon Marketing (Malaysia). The company famed for its printing solutions recently unveiled their new series to members of the media at 7atenine at Ascott Hotel in Jalan Pinang, Kuala Lumpur.

Canon Marketing (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd director of consumer system products division, Donny Ling said efficiency is of utmost importance for any business operations and especially so in a home office business environment. “SMEs make up 91% of the total number of businesses. With this new range of printers, we are confident it will further enhance the business prospects for users,” he said.

He added that the printers launched are designed to be the perfect home office companion that come with an easy operation design, faxing capabilities with fax security features and Pixma Cloud Link capabilities that will assist in ensuring efficiency and quality printing for all projects.

The new line-up of printers unveiled included the:

·ink efficient Pixma E60

·the premium Home AIO Pixma MX897

·the new inkjet range MX517 and MX377

·the speedy FAX-L170 laser fax machine

With added faxing capabilities, fax security and integrated Auto Document Feeder (ADF), the ink efficient Pixma E600 is the All-In-One printer for home offices just starting out. “The E600 is the variation of E500 that was launched last year without the fax. “It can print up to 800 pages and costs 5 sen a piece,” said marketing manager (consumer system products division) Yap Phei Leen.

Users will also find the Pixma MX897 easy to use with its 3.0” LCD display and Dual Function Panel (DFP) that has large and easy to press keys. Also, only the appropriate buttons for each function are lit so that users will not be daunted by large controls.

Another useful feature in the MX897 is the Canon Pixma Cloud Link where users can connect straight to the Canon Cloud Server by using the printer’s LCD screen and browse through various templates to print useful stationery when required. Users can also connect to their online photo album and print out photos without the use of a personal computer.

The Pixma MX517 and Pixma MX377 offer great advantages over other printers with features like the new fully-integrated Automatic Document Feeder (ADF), the user-friendly Dual Function Panel, and even wireless connectivity to mobile devices.

The Pixma MX517 is also equipped with mobile printing capabilities similar to the Pixma MX897. Fax security is also an optional feature available in the Pixma MX517.

Senior marketing manager (consumer products division) Sandy Lee said the new L170 laser fax machine will increase the laser printer sales by a large margin. “The design is revolutionary, it is small, compact and we believe this model will suit the needs of many in the market,” she said.

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Epson has unveiled their first Workforce branded series of printers designed for small to medium business use. The first two models of the new series are the Epson Workforce WF-7011 colour A3 single function printer, and the Epson Workforce WF-7511 - which is Epson's first-ever A3 inkjet all-in-one printer, and the model with the most comprehensive feature list in Epson's business inkjet printer range.

Designed as superior alternatives to colour laser printers to help small to medium businesses save costs without compromising productivity, Epson's new Workforce models achieve a cost per page that is up to 50% lower compared to colour laser printers. The Epson Workforce printers use Epson's extra high capacity 143 Durabrite Ultra pigment inks that offer a low 0.75 paise cost per A4 page for monochrome printing and Rs.2.10 per A4 colour page for colour prints. They come with ISO print speeds of up to 15 ipm (black, A4) and draft speed prints of up to 34ppm (black, A4). The Epson Durabrite Ultra inks also produce smudge-, water- and fade-resistant laser-quality text prints as well as superior photo prints compared to laser printers. The Epson Workforce series also boasts of a range of connectivity options. In addition to a standard USB 2.0 interface, the printers have built in Ethernet, and Wi-Fi. Furthermore, the Epson Workforce WF-7511 has a high performance fax as well as memory card slots and USB ports which users can print image or PDF files from, or scan items to. The printers can also print photos and documents from Apple iOS or Android devices through Apple Airprint, Epson iPrint; or from cloud services like Google cloud print apps and Evernote.

"The Epson Workforce A3 printers have been designed to provide our business customers a truly exhaustive set of imaging and printing capabilities with low running cost," says Mr. Samba Moorthy, director of sales & marketing. "From wireless, low cost, high quality A3 document or photo printing to scanning, to faxing and smartphone or cloud service printing, there is virtually nothing these new printers cannot do." With the individual cartridges on board, users can choose to replace only ink colours that have run out instead of multicolour, composite ink cartridges. This reduces ink wastage and helps users to maximize cost savings. Furthermore, Epson inkjet cartridges do not have print heads attached, making them more affordable to purchase and easier to recycle after they are depleted.

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On paper, Hewlett Packard’s Officejet Pro 8600 e Plus All-in-One printer looks like it might just be the least expensive printer to operate in a small office. And yes, it's an inkjet.

With a rated cost per page of just 1.6 cents for black and white, the Officejet 8600 beats the rap that inkjet printers are cheaply made, offer inferior print quality and are too expensive to run for office use. The 8600 even beats HP's own entry-level laser multifunction printer (MFP), the LaserJet M1212nf, with its estimated cost per page (CPP) of 4.1 cents. The Officejet also offers a higher mean time between failure rating and more features.

Theoretically, you should be able to operate the 8600 for even less than 1.6 cents per page in draft mode. But for most users in a shared office setting, the real cost of using a color inkjet MFP is likely to be significantly higher.

Going business class
The Officejet Pro 8600 is a business-class inkjet printer, which as a group tend to have lower ink costs than do consumer-class models. I chose the 8600 for my own office over a comparable HP LaserJet M1212nf multifunction printer because it's as fast as a laser, it has a lower published CPP for black and white printing, it lets me print an occasional color job, and it offers more features for the money (the LaserJet has a smaller paper tray and does not offer duplexing or wireless networking). Clearly, in the $200 to $250 price range, HP wants you to buy the inkjet model.

But as a long-time user of laser printers, I felt a bit uncomfortable about relying on inkjet technology as my office workhorse. I worried that my true cost per page would be much higher in actual use, that the Officejet would not offer the rock-solid reliability and durability of a laser, and that I would not be happy with the print quality and durability of the output once I got the unit home. "There's a long-term bias for laser in the office," admits Bottger, HP Image and Printing Group Marketing manager in HP's Officejet group.

Inkjet costs: Why your mileage will vary
Your average CPP with the 8600 will probably be higher than the 1.6 cents HP cites for black and white printing. Why? Because the printer driver is set for color by default. You can change the default to black and white, but getting at those settings to change back and forth can take a bit of effort, particularly for Windows machines, and I suspect that in a busy office many people won’t bother.

There’s also the temptation to print in color even when you probably don’t need to do so. I ended up printing substantially more pages in color than I expected, and that has driven up my average cost per page.

If you’re careful to always use the black and white mode you will probably come close to the 1.6 cents per page mark. But this is a device designed to be shared in a small office. Will everyone in your office be as good as you are about it? Probably not. The best way to enforce monochrome printing would be to have a mode switch on the printer itself. But even if that were an option – and it is not – that’s not a convenient solution.

So how much more might it cost to run this printer?
The average cost per color page, according to HP, is 7.2 cents. If it's not easy to switch between modes, people in your office may end up printing more documents in color than they need to, and if you're printing documents with color and black and white in the printer’s “normal” mode, your average costs will probably be closer to 7.2 cents per page. Color pages cost up to four times as much as black and white. Yes, it’s just a few pennies, but if you print 1,000 pages per month, an extra 5.6 cents per page adds up to $56 more in ink.

By contrast, printing monochrome text with a laser printer is easy: You just hit the print button and go. With the LaserJet your cost should always be close to the 4.1 cents per page specification, assuming the benchmarks are representative of how you print (more on that in a minute).

Configuration hassles
Setting the options for printing text and graphics in black and white involves navigating two or three clicks down through the menu hierarchy in the printer pop-up dialogs.

Under Windows the best approach for obtaining the lowest operating costs is to set the default to black and white in the control panel. But if you do that, when you want to print a PowerPoint presentation in color you will have to drill down through three levels of print dialog box settings to change the mode.

Here are the process steps shown above to change from color to black and white mode or vice-versa. The screen shot was taken while printing a Word for Windows document:

Select print/open dialog
Click properties button/open secondary dialog
Click advanced button/open tertiary dialog
Click “Print all text as black” and select “Enable”
Click “Print in grayscale” and select “Black Ink Only”
Click OK to close dialog
Click OK to close dialog
Click OK to print

What’s more, the setting doesn't stick. If you want to print three PowerPoint documents you'll either have to go through that process three times or else go into the printer control panel and change the default setting for the printer, then change it back. Who’s going to do that?

On the Mac, things are a bit easier. The OS X printer driver interface includes four preset configurations you can choose from, including “plain paper, fast draft, black and white.” But you can create and save your own custom configured presets, and the preset you chose sticks. To save both paper and ink, I configured my default for plain paper, draft, black and white, and duplexed.

I created my own economy mode print configuration presets for the 8600. It’s not intuitive, but you go to the print dialog, click the “copies and pages” drop down list, choose “Paper Type/Quality,” and click on the tiny “Color Options” arrow, which brings up options for black and white. From here you can select the paper type, image quality, color/greyscale and greyscale mode. The latter should be set to “black ink only.” After you’ve done all of that, you can save the settings under “Presets” so you don’t have to go through the process again.

That configuration, combining black and white printing with the draft mode, could drive your ink costs below 1.6 cents per page. But you also need to take all of these lab-generated cost per page numbers with a grain of salt. Here's why.

Behind the numbers
HP cites a cost per black and white text page of 1.6 cents based on testing that conforms to an International Standards Organization's benchmark specification known as ISO 24711. The CPP test results use whatever each printer vendor decides is the default print quality setting for a given model. HP offers, normal, draft, and best modes. For HP, the default is normal mode, something that wasn't spelled out in HP's page yield explanation online (An HP spokesperson said they would change that).

Comparing CPP numbers between HP's ink jet and LaserJet printers is even more dicey. Laser printers such as the HP M1212nf, use a slightly different test specification (ISO 19752), which produced a CPP of 4.1 cents. Sounds like the inkjet is the winner, right? Perhaps, but...

Again, the cost per page is based on the default print quality setting. For the LaserJet there's a "fast res" setting of 600 by 600 dots per inch (DPI) and a high resolution 1200 x 1200 setting. The Officejet offers: Draft (300 x 300 DPI), Normal (600x600) and Best (600 x 600). Higher quality modes print more dots per inch but also use more ink per dot.

Best mode prints more slowly to increase accuracy of detail, and uses more ink per dot than the normal mode does to attain a higher saturation level for stronger blacks and colors. By the same token, the draft mode lays down fewer dots than normal mode and uses less ink per dot, producing a lighter output.

HP bases its 1.6 cent CPP yield on the use of the default normal setting and the use of HP's economy-sized 950XL black ink cartridges, which run about $37 each and have a projected yield of up to 2,300 pages. XL cartridges are also available for the three color tanks that the 8600 requires. An entire set will save you money over the regular size cartridges, but you'll need to cough up about $120 every time you reorder, which is  more than half what I paid for the printer.

The good news is that in draft mode you should be able to do better than 1.6 cents per page, since the unit is printing at half the resolution of normal mode and using less ink per pixel. How much less, however, is anyone's guess. Half the resolution, less ink per dot -- sounds like you'd use half the ink. But HP cautions against drawing any conclusions. It isn't willing to make any claims here, and there are no industry standard tests you can rely on.

If best mode most closely approximates the quality you get with laser output for black and white printing, one can safely assume that the cost per page will exceed 1.6 cents. But again, it's impossible to know exactly how much more because there are no standardized benchmark tests on which to compare.

So if you run in normal mode, and most people will, your CPP will fall somewhere between the 1.6 cents and 7.2 cents mark, while a LaserJet falls right in the middle. Depending on what you print, in the end the cost between the two options might be more, it might be less, or it might be a wash. The opportunity for low cost operation is there, but only if you configure the unit for black and white only, normal or draft mode as your default.

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Canon's new DreamLabo 5000 production inkjet printer marks the company's entry into the commercial photo printing market. Designed for the retail photo printing and the high-end print-on-demand (POD) markets, the DreamLabo 5000 uses inkjet technology and produces output quality that rivals (or exceeds) conventional silver halide technology. It is also more environmentally benign.

Incorporating Canon’s FINE (Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering) technology, the DreamLabo 5000 uses a seven-colour dye-based ink system with cyan, magenta, yellow, black, grey, photo cyan and photo magenta inks. A high-density print head produces superior detail in both photos and text. The DreamLabo 5000 can produce output up to 305 mm wide and is capable of printing the contents of a 20-page A4-size photo album in just 80 seconds. It can also output 40 snapshot-sized (102 x 152mm) photo prints in just one minute. Other output options include greeting cards, calendars, full-colour brochures and leaflets and print-on-demand illustrated book production. In fact, any document that combines text with images will look better when printed with this technology that from rival offset and silver halide systems.

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The low-down: This A3-plus pigment printer is a considerable step up from the company's 9500. It uses 12 large ink cartridges, including three densities of grey for smooth black-and-white transitions. With glossy paper, there are five ink shades used for black and white. There is a clear Chroma Optimiser layer that minimises the nasty bronzing effect that pigment prints are prone to. The ink cartridges are static and not part of the moving head mechanism. There are excellent paper profiles provided, with software to create custom profiles. It is easy to match Photoshop monitor images with print output. It prints on blank CD/DVD discs. Printing is fast and quiet. The machine is heavy and beautifully made. There is ethernet as well as USB connectivity.

Like: Prints, both colour and black and white, are simply stunning. This is the best output we have seen from a domestic, affordable printer.

Dislike: Output on the expensive art papers is dull. And being forced to use extra-wide margins with heavy art paper is confusing and wasteful.

Verdict: This is simply the best pigment ink printer we have tested. We have produced consistent output with no annoying and costly mismatch of monitor and print. The prints should have a very long, fade-free life. The extra-large cartridges mean it should be more economical to use than the Pro9500 Mark II. It is a big, heavy beast that takes two people to lift and get into place and it needs a large desk area, so it won't fit in everyone's space. The heft and feel of the unit bespeak durability. Highly recommended.

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