With everything becoming portable nowadays, from computers, digital cameras to possibly even houses in some areas of the world (not the usual thing to have but I bet they're working on it), it's normal for the consumer to want to have and ask for a portable printer that they can take along with their digital camera or laptop when traveling. A travelers life, specially if it's for business purposes is rather unpredictable meaning that you never get to know whether you'll find a way to print where you're going even if you're attending a meeting or presentation of some sort.

So it's no wonder that the idea of taking along a small compact printer in your luggage along with a laptop sounds like an extremely good idea. And manufacturers are starting to provide a lot of options that enable customers to do so. Canon is one of the top companies that offers portable computer printers. The company's new Selphy line of printers is the top of the line when it comes to such products. But where did the company start and what was the beginning like in the development of compact and portable printers?

The Canon BJC-80 is one of their portable products that borrows many features from its bigger desktop brothers and scales them down appropriately to fit into a compact and easily movable shell. It's very important to say that this printer is very old on the market and can be seen as one of the ancestors of today's portable computer printers.

Back in the day it actually came with all the features a traveling professional might ever need. This sound a lot like the statement Bill Gates once made, claiming that '640k ought to be enough for anybody'. Weighing a bit under 1.5kg it's not a major inconvenience to carry. Because it features an infrared port the user can comfortably print without cables. Of course, the world has reached the point where Bluetooth or Wifi is a more viable choice, but back then IrDA was a viable and very exciting technology.

Now when it comes to wired connections this printer may seem a bit old for most people who have already moved on to the convenient world of USB 2.0. The BJC-80 offers connection through a standard parallel port so an adapter will be needed for anyone who's using it with a notebook and not your old desktop from 1999. For the time it was released the BJC-80 offered great quality printing. It could produce around the same quality prints as normal sized desktop printers. It came with color and black cartridges and produced deep and realistic blacks. Another thing that was plain amazing back in the day when people actually still were curious of what was in the devices they used rather than just sitting them on the table and using them is that the ink cartridge in this printer could be replaced with a scanner head. This lead to the printer working as a scanner and allowing up to 300dpi scanning in 24-bit color. While it might be old it will run just fine with a Windows XP system. Unfortunately the product has been discontinued, but people who still own one are probably continuing to enjoy the features it offers.

HP's first actual pigment-based printer was released to the market in 2006. Named the Photosmart Pro B9180, it provided good quality and brought some innovative features. After many years of getting the job done, the B9180 finally got a follow up model, retailing for a respectable price of $550, the Photosmart Pro B8850. Like many other HP models, the B8850 makes use of HP's famous Vivera inks.

The same inks can be found in the B8850's predecessor, the B9180 and the same cartridges and printheads will work on both models. So, you've guessed it, the print quality is the same. Eight pinkment inks can be found on the B8850 and include matte black, photo black, light gray, magenta, light magenta, cyan, light cyan and yellow.

As you might soon discover if you're considering purchasing one, the B8850 is a rather bulky printer at about 40 pounds. What's surprising is that some of the advanced features that the B9180 includes were left out when HP built the B8850. Hence you won't be getting a LCD display in an attempt of the manufacturer to keep this printer more affordable by the reasoning that you'll have the printer connected to a nearby computer anyway and except for the basic controls you won't need previewing or navigation on a screen onboard the printer .

Another 'downgrade' and way to keep costs down refers to connectivity. The B8850 only comes with an USB port and limits its user to an USB connection to a PC. The B9180 came with both USB and Ethernet. While it's not a must have, one can figure out the appeal of Ethernet if there is more than one user and computer relying on the same printer. Still, the B8850 can work for multiple printers if you must use it with more than one computer, through USB. But keep in mind that these HP color printers were designed for the amateur photographer who wants the same quality printing as in the case of the B9180. This means they'll prefer a lower price and won't care that much about the features that were removed.

The B8850 can handle a wide variety of media types including glossy, matte, semigloss or fine-art. Both the paper tray with a paper capacity of 200 sheets and the single-sheet manual feed tray can hold paper sizes of up to 13 by 19 inches. The Vivera inks included in the printer are really worth their money and provide great photo quality. The area in which the B8850 clearly surpasses all competition is black and white photography. The quality of those is similar to the one produced by printers of over $1000. Printing speed is not that great, however. A 4 by 6 inch print will process in about 70 seconds and a larger format photo will take minutes.

As a conclusion the B8850 is more of a downgrade rather than an upgrade from B9180 but the price on it also went down as a consequence. So if you're looking for the quality of those famous HP color printers with a more attractive price tag and aren't very interested in the features HP left out, then this is the perfect choice for you.

Who would have thought a few of years ago that it would be possible to get a copying machine, printer and scanner all in one device and on top of that for a highly affordable price tag of under 100$. Well today it seems very possible and actually frequently encountered. The Canon Pixma MP160 is one of these entry-level models that can do whatever your heart desires. Well, not everything your heart desires, but it can copy, print and scan and also offers other useful features. Since it retails for $90 it's among the easily affordable devices that can sit well on the desk of a home user, in a home office or even a small working environment that doesn't have high printing needs.



Compared to other more expensive multifunction printers, a couple of features are obviously not included in the MP160. For example, the printer doesn't have memory card slots or a LCD screen. People who find this bothersome may want to take a look at the MP160's bigger brother, the M810 that offers both the memory card slots and a mono LCD, for a very small amount of money added to the price tag.



The design used on the MP160 isn't a first for a Canon color printer. In fact it has been used for many of the printers in the same line as this one. It includes a mix of black and grey plastic and smooth rounded edges.On the front side of the printer you'll find a PictBrige port. This allows direct printing from any compatible digital camera. Unfortunately,because there's no LCD you won't be able to preview anything on the printer, but rather directly on the camera. The control panel is, however, well designed and simple and you'll find all the needed functions. From color and mono copy buttons, to a cancel printjob button and three indicator LED's for ink level and eventual paper jams, everything like that is included in the control panel sitting right on the front ot the MP160. On the back side of the printer you'll find a USB port, which is also the only way you may connect this printer to a PC.

While as features the MP160 doesn't offer much, and the MP180 tends to be a more viable choice with its included memory card readers and LCD screen for around $10 more (although the LCD still doesn't offer photo previewing), it does shine when it comes to print quality. Mono text is clean and sharp enough, graphics are printed out in good quality, whereas the photos look natural and exceptionally well for such an affordable printer. According to Canon a 10 by 15 inch photo should take about 52 seconds to print, which we must admit isn't bad at all.



For an entry-level and highly affordable printer, this Canon color printer actually delivers good quality printing and satisfying printing speeds. While it's really truly worth the money spent on it users who really require the use of memory cards will find the MP180 from the same line of printers an even better deal.

Most people tend to have a strict opinion when it comes to buying printers and chose exactly the same brands, over and over. HP users will generally stick to buying HP, then there are people who are fans of Canon. Taking that into account, competing on the printer market when a couple of manufacturers already have a great number of the possible consumers covered and convinced of their products' quality, seems relatively hard. There are two types of products that are currently extremely popular on the market, multifunction printers and photo printers. The multifunction printer came after a long time during which office users had to actually stuff several bulky devices for copying, printing and scanning in the same room. It came as a relief, from multiple points of view. And now that prices went down for all-in-one printers that target the home user, they are even more convenient. Photo printers on the other hand, be it inkjets or dye-sublimation printers, come in the form of either ultraportable digital camera companions, home desk standalones or professional photo printers.



Looking to possibly impress or sell, Dell has released a product that manages to confuse the audience. The Dell color printers named Photo All-in-One 966, judging by the name, should be dedicated to photo printing. So people will be rather surprised when they hear that it comes with an automatic document feeder and faxing features, which are usually included in printers that are made for office use. Actually, when you look at the way it was designed, you still tend to think of an office environment.



It comes with a relatively boxy casing and the auto document feeder with a 50 sheet paper capacity intimidates from the top of this printer. Right on the front you'll find the four memory card slots that support most types of memory cards as well as a PictBridge port for direct printing from compatible digital cameras, both allowing the printer to work without a PC. Paper capacity is limited to 150 pages that fit in the input drawer but you can acquire a separate secondary drawer for an extra 150 worth of paper storage. Other optionals available for the Dell Photo All-in-One 966 include a duplexer, wireless, Ethernet or a Bluetooth adapter.

Thus, judging strictly from the features list, these Dell color printers can handle the needs of an office perfectly well and should have been released as an office multifunction printer that also offers some photo



printing functionality although the photo quality offered isn't great. The quality of prints is somewhat better than in the case of other office all-in-one's, if that's what you decide to compare it with. But it's also significantly lower than in the case of photo printers on the market. Now the truly bad part is that it offers rather slow printing speeds for both text and photo. What this means is it won't be a top choice for an office that requires some speed, but it won't do well as a photo all-in-one either due to lack of features and good photo quality.

Last time anyone checked it was laser printers that were on the bulky side, offering a million features in just one device and breaking down your desk. Inkjet printers came in smaller sizes and didn’t create such a problem as space. I can think of quite a few all-in-one inkjets that still manage to offer a relatively small form factor. Well, it’s clearly not the case with the Epson B-500DN color business ink jet printer that competes with color laser printers both in functionality and size.



This particular Epson printer is advertised by the company as being affordable to maintain. On top of that, it’s said to offer print speeds that are as good as in the case of lasers and much better color printing quality.



This is one printer where you could say that design clearly doesn’t matter. Being kind you could say that it looks rather odd. Leaving kindness aside the general impression it gives you is that of a big black plastic brick. The prominent area on the left houses the four ink cartridges this printer uses to work. The ink cartridges are Epson’s own Durabrite pigmented inks and offer good quality for an inkjet printer. But whatever the manufacturer may claim, they don’t measure up to laser quality, at least for text and graphics. When talking about photo printing however, the tables are turned and you’ll get great quality and vivid photographs. Also, as Epson claims, the maintenance costs are really low. You can find black cartridges in three different capacities on the market that last for 3000, 4000 or 8000 pages. The color ones are available in 3500 or 7000 sheet varieties. Using the high capacity ones you’ll get to save a lot of money. Paper capacity on this printer is more than reasonable. You’ll find a paper cassette on the front that can hold up to 500 sheets of regular paper. Under that there’s another feed tray (you’ll find it hidden under a cover) which will allow another 100 sheets.

For navigation you’ll get to use the simple control panel that features a very hard to read two-line display. The five control buttons are arranged in a diamond like shape, whereas right next to them you’ll find two additional buttons for on/off and paper feeding.  Connectivity is limited to USB and Ethernet which are both found on the back of the printer.

There’s not much to be said about the Epson B-500DN color business ink jet printer aside from this. It’s a business inkjet printer that does come pretty close as quality and speed to a laser. It comes with a similar price tag too. And if you seem to think that the price you pay initially is high, well, you end up saving a lot throughout using this printer. This was rarely the case with inkjets which generally cost a bucket full if you keep using them. The print quality is good and photo quality is great. This is the main reason why you’d want to settle for this instead of a laser. The only inconvenience to the B500DN is that it’s rather loud when printing and some users may grow to be annoyed with this.