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.

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