First off, there seem to be very few logical reasons to nowadays chose a simple printer, when you can get an all-in-one for close to the same price. Of course, some people chose to not spend a couple of extra bucks for features they know for sure they will never use. But having a scanner around, just in case you might need it, is pretty convenient. Another thing that needs to be said is that all-in-ones can do a lot of stuff, but don't manage to do any of them as well as single devices.

All-in-ones, just like your regular printers, come in a wide variety of prices and sizes. The Epson Artisan 810 all-in-one color inkjet printer aims a bit higher than most. It's packed with premium features, provides a printer, scanner, fax(color) and wireless connectivity. It's main audience is the more pretentious user who would rather spend an extra buck for a top of the line device that can do just about anything (anything that has been invented up until now anyway). On the front side of the printer you'll instantly set your eyes on a 7.8 inch touch panel. Right under that you can find the output tray. Somewhwre to the right, there's a built in card reader that supports but the bigger Compact Flash cards and the small SD, xD and MS cards.

When the all-in-one was invented, it was pretty clear what type of consumer it was being made for. You could mainly find the devices in small businesses or home offices. This is because they were a more affordable alternative to actually acquiring a printer, scanner, copier and fax machine separately (specially when you're not that interested in quality) and they took up considerably less space.

The Artisan 810 however, is more of a all-in-one high end printer for very creative people that enjoy printing out quality photographs as well. It works just fine for offices though and it comes with a built in duplexer and an automatic document feeder.

You'll have no problem printing pictures directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch and it will even charge any device that you decide to connect through the USB port. It's decently fast, it has excellent print and photo quality and a pretty large touchscreen for controls. One extra feature that it has to offer is CD printing. But since there's no information at all regarding how to do that in the printer's manual, users will have to figure it out all by themselves.

Having said all these good things about the Epson Artisan 810 all-in-one color inkjet printer, the bad points don't seem all that important anymore. What could bother a potential customer is the higher purchase price and the fact that it has six ink cartridges, which means more consumables that have to be bought, thus a higher price to pay when it runs out of ink. But most people will find it well worth the money.

Upon invention, color laser printers would bleed your pockets dry if you would dare to consider acquiring one. Nowadays you can easily find some pretty affordable models like the Samsung CLP-315W color laser printer. It's for sale for a mere 200$.

One great thing about this printer is the piano black gloss design, after having seen more than enough white printers that tend to turn beige after only a couple of months of use. Controls and alerts are also elegantly simple and you will find a single power button on top, and a few led lights that let you know whether ink is low, your wireless connection is down or if paper suddenly gets stuck for no reason at all. It's relatively small and lightweight for a color laser printer and it won't take up a whole desk if someone decides to take it home.

Samsung CLP-315W color laser printer has four individual toner cartridges, one black and three color, that can be found by opening the panel on the faceplate. Since each can be changed separately, its owner won't be forced to replace them all at the same time. This translates, obviously, into money saving.

Laser printers are generally more expensive than inkjet printers. A customer will most of the times be drawn to the cheaper product out of two, by the logic 'they both print just as well, and one is cheaper'. But a laser printer might just be the affordable one in the long run, with much lower printing costs.

According to the manufacturer black printing speed is of up to 16 ppm in A4 while color speed is up to 4 ppm. Realistically speaking, most people report performances of 2-3 ppm in color. This is slighly lower than your average laser color printer, and most users will find it a slow device. In small offices or home offices, that will be just a slight inconvenience, but bigger workgroups will most likely prefer to look for some other product.

Samsung commercializes two separate versions of the CLP315 printer, the standard CLP-315 and the CLP-315W that comes with built in wireless networking apart from the standard USB connection. The CLP-315W does great at printing black text, but not so well as similarly priced printers when the user decides to print photos. One very enjoyable aspect is that you can actually tell the difference in sharpness when you print plain black text.

To sum everything up, good things that this printer has to offer include : compact size and a great, very eye-pleasing glossy design; independent cartridges that will save you money in the long run ; compatibility with basically all operating systems (Windows, Linux and Mac) right out of the box, with all drivers included.

There apparently are just as many bad points to it though, including very slow printing speeds comparing to most of it's rivals. The quality of the prints, while not bad, isn't as great as you might expect it to be either. There's also no duplex printing option and the 150 sheet tray might be ok for some, while others might tend to find it a bit small.

When the HP Officejet 6000 hit the market, it reserved it's place among the middle class, single function printers. In a market full of all-in-ones, it is odd to get to see a simple printer get released and it makes you somehow wonder why someone would still be interested in such a device. The answer is ease of use and low price. A smart consumer knows that there's no point in paying for features that they'll never get to use. And as a bonus, in this case, less features means more speed.

While it may not surprise you with any high-end features, it does exactly what it's supposed to, it's a reliable and fast office laser color printer. The design isn't very special either, but since it's place is mainly in an office, no one really expects much style or flashiness.

When HP released this office laser color printer, simplicity was the key word. Thus, there's no shiny LCD screen and controlling the printer happens through classic rounded buttons. You can find the buttons just above the paper tray. You'll have your power button, cancel button and a paper feed button, as well as a button for network setup. In case the ink starts running low, four sparkly leds on the top right will let you know, so that you can replace it.

The major inconvenient for most users is the lack of a USB slot as well as a media card reader. Since there's also no LCD screen, this basically means that the printer depends on a PC for functioning and all settings have to be done through the driver. What's also odd is that HP didn't include a USB cable, so before buying this printer it's highly recommended that you bring your own.

Among it's strong points is the really good print quality (both color and monochrome). And it doesn't compromise when it comes to speed either. It actually provides pretty fast print speeds compared to similar printers, up to 32ppm in draft black and 31ppm in draft color. Print resolution is up to 600dpi in black and 4800 x 1200 dpi for color. The HP Officejet 6000 includes four ink cartridges, one of which is black, the rest being color. The manufacturer claims that the black cartridge will work for around 400 pages, and the color will last for a little less, about 300. Also on the plus side is the sturdy input tray that stores up to 250 sheets, comparing to other plain printers that will only hold around 100 pages.

Overall, it's a pretty simple and straightforward printer that performs well. It should do just fine for a small or home office and it's small price recommends it. Since it was manufactured to work as a workgroup printer, it also provides networking. It doesn't include wireless but just in case the user needs that, HP has also released a wireless model, which obviously comes with a slightly bigger price tag.

The days when you would own a separate device for printing, scanning and copying are pretty much gone. When looking for a printer now, the consumer requires all of those features in one device. Requirements don’t end here though. Depending on the needs of each user, the all-in-one printer should also be pretty small, easy to use, at an affordable price or with plenty of extra features. Since multifunction printers have become a reasonably common thing, they now obviously come in a variety of shapes, sizes and most of all prices. Some offer wireless connectivity, others boast bigger and brighter LCD screens. Most manufacturers have noticed this trend, so most of them now have a whole series of devices, for all budgets and demands.

Cannon’s Pixma MP490 photo all-in-one inkjet color printer is towards the more affordable, and simple to use end of the scale. When buying a lower end device, you generally expect to get a lot less features than if you were buying a high end printer. But realistically speaking, the main features (like printing, scanning and copying which is what the consumer is interested in, in the first place) are pretty much the same, regardless of the price of the device.

In the case of the MP490 what you get is a compact, stylish printer that gets the job done. On the bright side, the MP490 is rather inexpensive (under 100$), simple to use as well as to set up, and has a pretty intuitive control panel. It’s also small and lightweight, measuring 450 x 335 x 155mm and weighing just 5.5kg, so it won’t take up all of your desk space. The print resolution is pretty high, at 4800 x 1200 and the printer incorporates Canons’ patented FINE technology.



To the right of the scanner lid, you can find a smaller top lid that uncovers a 1.8 inch LCD screen serving as a control panel. While it is mainly used for navigation and to display the menu, it also works pretty well for previewing photo thumbnails. On the front right side of the printer you can also find a memory card slot. The MP490 supports a pretty wide variety of media-cards including SD, MemoryStick R, Memory Stick Pro and Memory Stick Duo. Design-wise, the only thing the customer can complain about would be the slightly flimsy plastic paper tray. Other features include : Auto Photo Fix II (software that automatically corrects your images), Borderless Printing, Document Printing, Photo Printing, Photo Index Sheet, Template Print.

So far Canon Pixma MP490 photo all-in-one inkjet color printer sounds like an amazing device for 100$, but like many other printers in that price range, it obviously has some bad points as well. In the case of this printer, what you don’t get is an automatic document feeder and wireless support.  Disadvantages also include its rather slow printing speed as well as the high cost for replacing the black ink cartridge. In other words, what you save when you buy the device, you might just end up paying for actually using it frequently and having to replace the ink.