The HP Deskjet D1660 printer has speeds up to 16 pages per minute in color and 20 in black, with a 15-sheet output tray and 80-sheet fold-up input tray, being made of 25% recycled plastic.

The HP Deskjet D2660 printers has speeds up to 21 pages per minute in color and 28 in black, with a easy Web-page printing and 20-sheet output tray, 80-sheet fold-up input tray, made of 50% recycled paper; the HP Deskjet D2680 printer has similar features to the HP Deskjet D2660, including the Budget Express software.

The HP Designjet 130 Printer is for professional prints and photos, accommodating media sizes/types from postcard to poster, up to 80 lb., 0.15″ thick; the HP Business Inkjet 2800dtn Printer has an automatic two-sided printing feature and a ready network, with an extra tray and easy integration into any environment and four individual cartridges.

The HP Officejet 6000 wireless printer has an automatic two-sided printing feature, cutting the energy use up to 40% compared to lasers, with wireless printing and fast wired; the HP Officejet Pro 8000 Wireless printer has an automatic two-sided printing feature with speeds up to 35 pages per minute in color and 36 black, using 50% less energy than the laser printers; the HP Officejet 7000 Wide Format Printer can be shared with other four users via the wired networking, using less than 40% energy compared with the laser printers and with the lowest cost per page.

The HP Photosmart B8550 Photo Printer has a 2.4″ color display for easy photo review and editing, with an HP Smart Web printing and HP Auto Sense technology, using individual inks, having memory card slots and a front USB port but also a photo tray.

The HP Designjet T1200 44inch PostScript Version Printer has to be one of the most expensive HP single-function inkjet printers, compared to the ones listed above, printing pages of D/A1 sizes in less than 30 seconds and using the HP 72 inks; it is ideal fro the medium-size teams that need high-quality technical GIS/CAD and supporting two on-line roll sheets of 44 to 66 inch wide at one time.

HP, alongside other names such as Canon, Epson, Dell, Compaq, Samsung and Sony, dominates the computer industry from all over the world, ever since its establishment in 1939 in Dave Packard’s garage. HP is in fact the abbreviation of its two creator’s names, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard or simply Hewlett-Packard. This company specializes in the developing, manufacturing and designing of computers and computer related devices such as printers, scanners or all-in-ones, computer component and part, electronic devices for data storage, software and hardware. HP is also an efficient marketer because each electronic device invented has a particular feature that makes it distinguishable from all the other products from other series.

It is probably less cost-effective to buy printers that print only in black and white or grayscale or only color, when at discounted prices you may find some efficient all-in-ones. Of course, when choosing a particular electronic product, people tend to focus more on what they find as appropriate for their profession, one of the main reasons why manufactures such as HP develop various printer series.

The HP Designjet T770 44 inch Printer has a fast printing feature of Ai/D size pages in less than 28 seconds, being ideal for in-house printing of high-quality technical GIS/CAD, using HP 72 inks and supporting sheets of 8.3–44″ wide and rolls 11–44″ wide.

This company specializes in the developing, manufacturing and designing of computers and computer related devices such as printers, scanners or all-in-ones, computer component and part, electronic devices for data storage, software and hardware. HP is also an efficient marketer because each electronic device invented has a particular feature that makes it distinguishable from all the other products from other series.

It is probably less cost-effective to buy printers that print only in black and white or grayscale or only color, when at discounted prices you may find some efficient all-in-ones. Of course, when choosing a particular electronic product, people tend to focus more on what they find as appropriate for their profession, one of the main reasons why manufactures such as HP develop various printer series.

Since this article’s main interest are the HP inkjet printers, below you can find a list of some of the most popular examples available for sale, in no particular order.

The HP Deskjet D1660 printer has speeds up to 16 pages per minute in color and 20 in black, with a 15-sheet output tray and 80-sheet fold-up input tray, being made of 25% recycled plastic.

The HP Deskjet D2660 printers has speeds up to 21 pages per minute in color and 28 in black, with a easy Web-page printing and 20-sheet output tray, 80-sheet fold-up input tray, made of 50% recycled paper.

The HP Deskjet D2680 printer has similar features to the HP Deskjet D2660, including the Budget Express software.

The HP Officejet 6000 wireless printer has an automatic two-sided printing feature, cutting the energy use up to 40% compared to lasers, with wireless printing and fast wired.

The HP Officejet Pro 8000 Wireless printer has an automatic two-sided printing feature with speeds up to 35 pages per minute in color and 36 black, using 50% less energy than the laser printers.

The HP Officejet 7000 Wide Format Printer can be shared with other four users via the wired networking, using less than 40% energy compared with the laser printers and with the lowest cost per page.

The HP Officejet H470wbt Mobile Printer is lightweight and compact, with a wireless connectivity and Lithium-Ion battery, printing from cameras, phone cameras, memory cards, PDAs and PCs.
The HP Designjet T770 44 inch Printer has a fast printing feature of Ai/D size pages in less than 28 seconds, being ideal for in-house printing of high-quality technical GIS/CAD, using HP 72 inks and supporting sheets of 8.3–44″ wide and rolls 11–44″ wide.

The HP Designjet 130 Printer is for professional prints and photos, accommodating media sizes/types from postcard to poster, up to 80 lb., 0.15″ thick.

The HP Business Inkjet 2800dtn Printer has an automatic two-sided printing feature and a ready network, with an extra tray and easy integration into any environment and four individual cartridges.

The HP Designjet T1200 44inch PostScript Version Printer has to be one of the most expensive HP single-function inkjet printers, printing pages of D/A1 sizes in less than 30 seconds and using the HP 72 inks; it is ideal fro the medium-size teams that need high-quality technical GIS/CAD and supporting two on-line roll sheets of 44 to 66 inch wide at one time.

As design it doesn’t really shock you. It is average sized for an small office multifunction printer and measures 12 x 18 x 15.5 inches. The functions it offers are print, copy, scan and faxing. On the front of the printer you’ll only discover the control panel with a single button that works for powering the Platinum Pro 905 on. The rest of the input is done with the help of the color touchscreen. Also on the front you get to see a PictBridge USB port that allows direct printing from compatible digital cameras.

The paper tray is situated at the bottom and has a capacity of 150 sheets. On top of that the printer also has a secondary 150 sheet tray that boosts the total paper capacity to 300 sheets. While the top one can work with photo paper as well, the bottom drawer can only contain legal and letter sized media. One very interesting thing about the Platinum Pro 905 inkjet color printer is its use of Lexmark innovative SmartSolutions Web site which was created to offer a lot of content and extra functionality. To explain this better, users can access web-based applications straight from the printer’s large 4.3 inch display.

A button on the LCD can be programmed to launch a series of actions. A few presets come with the printer but users can easily program their own (which is the main idea of SmartSolutions). The presets that you get allow you to view any RSS feed, view or print an agenda from Google calendar. One important thing you need to remember is that for web access to work the printer needs to be hooked up to an Ethernet or wireless network.

Under the bonnet the user can find a four-ink printing system consisting of cyan, magenta, yellow and black cartridges. While the inks are made more for office use than photographic printing and don’t offer very high capacity, the low price of consumables makes this printer be affordable in the long run. So for the most part, the rule ‘buy it cheap but spend more later’ does in fact apply for most printers, especially when they come from Lexmark. In this case, you spend a bit more money initially but get to save throughout use.

Printing speed is satisfactory and the Platinum Pro 905 will produce about 6 pages per minute for black text. Printing, both color and black looks adequate and there’s little to complain about. However photo printing is not great and skin tones are a bit far from what they should be. As a conclusion, the Lexmark Platinum Pro 905 inkjet color printer is a reliable small office printer with satisfactory paper capacity and most of all affordable printing costs.

This technology is called zink. Zink printers are inkless photo printers and zink is short for zero ink. This technology completely eliminates the need for ink cartridges or ribbons. The technology was developed over several years and works with the help of some very ‘smart’ photo paper. The patented zink paper is made out of a material that includes cyan, magenta and yellow dye crystals as well as a po

Polaroid’s Pogo is probably the first photo printer to make use of the Zink technology. The Polaroid camera implied instant printing and PoGo works in the same way. Compared to older cameras that could only snap the picture and print it out, the Pogo comes with a wide variety of photo adjusting features like view, crop or borders.

When you receive the printer you’ll discover that the rechargeable battery is already in the box so there will be no need to purchase it separately. Also included are 10 sheets of paper to get you started and see how the printer works. On top of the advantage list we can also mention the fact that the Polaroid Pogo is probably the smallest and most portable printer to be found on the market. You can actually stick the printer in a pocket and carry it around as it only measures 3 x 4.7 x 2 inches and weighs 10 ounces without battery. For extra convenience the printer also ships with a wrist strap.

Before you jump to buy these inkless photo printers though, please do consider the bad points as well. One of them would be that zink technology is still fresh on the market hence it hasn’t been fully perfected. The quality of the prints isn’t out of this world and the cost of the paper you constantly need to buy may make you prefer an inkjet.

Truth be told, for most basic users there’s really no need to pay considerably more on an inkjet printer, for example, because most of them offer the exact same thing. Several features like copying, scanning or wireless may not be useful for the most users who might prefer to get a standalone device for a much lower price tag. When looking for a printer it’s good to know that inkjet is the standard and the most affordable technology. There are quite a few inexpensive color printers you can buy.

For a mere $45 you can, for example, find a HP Deskjet F4235 all-in-one printer. Aside from standard printing this device also offers copying and scanning. Up to 22 pages per minute for black and 16 pages for color printing is more than reasonable for such a price. Since it uses HP Vivera inks this automatically means the print quality is good. The printer is also easy to setup and has a pleasant design. Lastly, HP is known for high quality and reliable printers.

For about $59 another possible choice would be the Lexmark X2500 inkjet all-in-one printer. It offers the same speeds as the HP presented a bit earlier, can do borderless printing, copy and scan but doesn’t do so well with photos and does not include PictBridge compatibility. What you don’t pay at first on this printer, you do however make up for when buying consumables. The ink is pretty expensive compared to most of its competition.

Another option is a standalone Canon Pixma iP 3500 that can be found for roughly $70. While it’s slighly more expensive initially than the Lexmark and the HP, it doesn’t cost as much for ink replacement and offers both USB and PictBrige ports for printing from both PC and digital camera. While print speeds are average, the Pixma IP 3500 as many other printers from its line, offers very good print quality.

The three printers above are meant to serve as examples for what inexpensive color printers you can currently find on the market. The list of affordable printers is much longer and most manufacturers have at least two-three offerings of regular printers at any given time. It’s important to establish what exactly you want to use the printer for before you consider buying one then scout for printers with those features at affordable prices. Also check out how much the ink cartridges for the certain printer cost. While it’s not a rule, generally a low initial buying price implies a considerably higher maintenance cost, so do consider this too when you’re planning to make a purchase.

The best place to start is establishing what you’re going to need it for. If you only print photos you might be interested in a standalone photo printer with higher photo quality and a higher number of inks. If you’re buying it for a home office then you may be better off choosing a multifunction printer (like a Canon Pixma MP490) that offers copying, printing, scanning and decent quality photo printing as well.

Print speed is also a pretty important detail. If you’re using the printer in an office and expect it to throw out a high number of prints in a short amount of time you may be better off choosing a laser printer. But some of the new inkjets also offer good printing speeds (especially for draft mode text).

As a general idea, brand may also play an important part in choosing the best photo inkjet printer. Right now the most commonly sold brands in the US are Canon, Epson, HP and Lexmark.

Special needs were obviously not included in what was mentioned above. Users that would like to print photos at larger formats should be looking for a large format printer that allows it. A good thing to also study is the maintenance cost after purchase. Some models of printers have very expensive consumables. This means that you may pay $50 at the beginning to purchase the printer and then discover that replacing the ink for it may cost you as much as buying a new printer. Carefully study that before you make a selection.

But what printer should you chose? The two main technologies of printers are inkjet and laser. But what is so special about inkjet vs laser printer and vice versa? In this article we’re going to explore what’s good and bad about inkjets and lasers. Let’s start with inkjets

The great part about the inkjet technology is that it’s pretty cheap nowadays. Entry-level inkjet printers can be found for under $50 if you take your time to consider the options. Inkjets are also pretty varied as features. If you want a color all-in-one for a home office, you can find an inkjet printer to offer that. The same can be said about photo printers. Generally smaller than lasers they can easily fit on your desk.

In fact, most of the time a simple rule applies, the less you payed on the printer, the more the consumables will cost you. The ink is also a problem for some users. First off because it has a slower dry time. Secondly because if you don’t use the printer for a longer period of time the ink will get clogged or dry. Laser printers shine when it comes to cost efficiency after purchase. The initial cost may be more expensive but once you’ve bought it you’ll get pretty low costs per copy. They are also very reliable and can handle insane volumes of printing a month.

Most laser printers have fast printing speeds and can achieve crisp, high quality text with ease. If you aren’t bothered by the high initial price and how huge they are (requiring a whole corner of the room sometimes) then color lasers don’t really have any bad points.

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.

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.

This is a pretty good rule for netbooks, the small notebooks that are flooding the market as well as for portable printers. Although mobile printers often mean slower printing speeds and not such good photo quality, Canon’s printers often managed to be an exception to this rule.

These Canon photo printers were among the first mobile printers released with a 9600 dpi resolution. It continues a long linage of popular inkjet printers, and the direct ‘successor’ to the IP90v. The Pixma IP100 has a silver matte finish outer shell, complimented by glossy black panels on the side. Its design was borrowed almost completely from its predecessor, the IP90v.

Both the paper tray and the front lid fold up conveniently and the printer becomes easily portable in a matter of seconds. Since it weighs 4.4 pounds, it can be considered a bit heavier than most of the devices of this type; but it makes this up by a slightly more compact form factor and measures 12.7 x 7.2 x 2.4 inches. The input tray can hold 50 sheets of paper, and sizes supported include 2 by 3, 4 by 6, 5 by 7 and 8 by 10 inch.

Aside from printing straight from a PC, the IP100 also offers a PictBridge port that will allow direct printing from any compatible digital camera. Sadly there is no memory card slot or Wifi. A Bluetooth adapter can be bought separately, however, which will let you print sans wires from either a mobile phone or laptop. For these Canon photo printers an enhanced 5 ink system was used.

This system is meant to maximize print quality for both photos and documents. The 5 inks include a photo black ink for rich contrast and good photo printing. A separate Pigment black can be used for sharp text and office documents. Documents are printed at good quality. But it’s the photo quality that really impresses. Photos look vivid and detailed even on larger paper.

Now it’s commonly known that portable photo printers have embarrassing print speeds. It’s not the case here. The IP100 can print out a 4 by 6 inch photo in about 50 seconds and a 8 by 10 inch in a bit over two minutes and a half. While it’s not mind-blowing and you’ll still find it slow as wait time, it’s considerably better than most other portable photo printers. Finally, the IP100 retails for about $250. It’s greatest disadvantage is the lack of a memory card slot. Other than that it offers great quality, portability and speed.

For a long time color laser printers were the best for office use because they offered high capacity, crisp text printing and had a good price per print. Nowadays inkjets are starting to be more competitive, and offer lower printing costs. The speed of inkjet has also improved and the technology is extremely good when it comes to printing imagery and photographs. The same can’t be said about lasers.

The quality of the K8600dn is very competitive. It manages to produce crisp text that’s very similar to the one produced by a laser printer while the photos printed by it look natural and good quality. This HP printers uses four-color printing and is equipped with tanks that load behind the door you’ll find on the front of the printer.

There are two print heads, one for black and yellow and the other for magenta and cyan. The tanks are high capacity and will last somewhere in between 830 and 1070 prints (for standard capacity) or 1510 to 2500 pages (high-yield). Speeds are satisfying for a small office and the HP K8600dn can produce up to 35 pages per minute in draft (both color and mono) or 13 pages per minute in quality that can be compared to the one of laser printers.

Office printers need to also offer good paper capacity. In the case of the K8600dn you’ll be getting a 250 input tray. The lid of the input tray serves as an output tray and has a capacity of 150 sheets. Also featured is an automatic duplexer that allows cost and time saving by printing on both sides of paper. The K8600dn can handle a wide variety of media types and sizes. The list includes envelopes, transparencies, photo paper, cards and others. Connecting this printer can be done through high speed USB 2.0. Standard connectivity also includes HP Jetdirect Fast Ethernet embedded Print server and you can optionally make use of HP Jetdirect external print servers.

Finally, the HP Officejet Pro K8600dn wide format color inkjet printer is not the most affordable of the bunch and most offices will find some of its features a bit too much, as they only need the more basic printing capabilities. The quality is pretty good but unfortunately not as good as a high-end color laser (that you’d most likely be able to get for around the same price). On top of that some users may be inconvenienced by the way you need to load paper with this printer. Raising the tray and struggling with it every time you need to refresh paper is somewhat annoying.