Did you know that the typical photo printed in a print lab only lasts around 50 years? According the Epson, photos printed with the Epson Picture Mate Photolab & Printer last much longer – 4 times longer to be exact.

I think what they mean is that photos won’t begin to fade for 200 years (4 times longer) than photos created in a print lab. I don’t know that much about printing, but I don’t believe that photos created in a print lab will fall apart the second they hit 50 years old.

I do believe that photos printed with the Epson Picture Mate Photolab & Printer last longer. It uses advanced MicroPiezo technology developed by Epson to help your photos last longer and look their best. This technology also improves the quality of the photos printed.

With the Epson Picture Mate you can print from digital camera, USB flash drive, memory card, or by bluetooth for mobile phones and other devices.

Other than the whole last 200 years thing, another cool feature of the Picture Mate is it’s large easy to see LCD screen measuring a generous 3.6 inches.

Being able to see exactly what you’re printing before you hit print is a great benefit to avoid wasting photo paper. You can also easily  navigate around using that same screen, so it should be suitable for anyone ranging from a beginner to an expert.

The printer can run as a standalone machine or with your computer. It includes software for Windows (many versions, including Windows XP and Windows Vista) and Mac OS X. Linux users could also probably find a way to run the software (maybe with WINE) or find an alternative.

It was difficult to find things about this photo printer that I didn’t like. However, it only prints 4×6 photos. If this is all that you are looking for, this printer is pretty much perfect, but if you’d like to print something larger than you may need to go for a full size all in one style printer.

The Photo Mate prints at a high quality (5760×1440 dpi). Epson guarantees that you get at least 150 photos from every cartridge, making it a little more budget friendly than one might expect.

If you don’t, they will pro-rate the price of the cartridge and refund you a fraction of the price. I don’t know anyone who has taken them up on this deal, but it seems that this will protect you from purchasing a bad cartridge and losing money.

You probably won’t end up asking for a refund if you print 148 photos, but if it’s down around 100 it would be worth your time.

Recently, our office got a new printer, HP Officejet Pro 8500 Premier Wireless All-in-One Printer. This all-in-one printer lets you turn your office into a professional print shop.

It high-quality laser printing is one of its kind. It’s built in wireless networking lets you to print from any room of the office. You have the option to print your own marketing materials and save up to 50% of the costs.

In addition, when you buy the printer, you get three extra color print cartridges, HP Brochure paper, and marketing software.

This helps you to start printing your own brochures instantly. This printer contains the original HP Officejet Pro pigment inks which make your documents very sharp and lively.

It also saves a lot of time because of its two tray system. You can print up to 500 pages without reloading paper.

You also have the option to save paper by enabling the two-sided printing, scanning, and faxing. This will save on office costs.

This printer reduces the clutter from under your office table because of its wireless networking. This will also help in improving office productivity by sharing the printer with numerous people.

This HP Officejet Pro printer will save on your energy by burning up 50% less power. More importantly, as you are using one printer instead of many, so you will be reducing your energy consumption automatically.

The HP Officejet uses four different inks – 940 Black, 940 Cyan, 940 Magenta and 940 Yellow. You can also connect to your PC by using a USB cable. It is a wonderful office product and quite economical too.

Do you own an inkjet printer? Has the printhead ever clogged up on you, creating streaks or missing colors from your printing?

Clogs can be incredibly frustrating. Normally when you find out you have a clogged printhead, it’s because you’re right in the middle of printing something important.

It’s one of those problems that you never ask for. It just seems to throw itself in your lap without warning, and then taunts you in your efforts to fix it.

The printhead is the mechanism of your printer (or inkjet cartridge), where the ink actually comes out.

For the most part, printhead clogs can be normally be flushed out with a couple of “head cleaning” cycles. A head cleaning cycle is a built-in function of your printer. It’s a specialized routine meant to address this type of problem.

This “cleaning cycle” works by sending a strong ‘print signal’ to your printer, while at the same time drawing a small vacuum from underneath.

The combination of these two steps works in an attempt to suck out clogged ink from the printhead. From my experience, you’ll probably need to run between 3 and 5 cycles to fully clear a clog.

The location of the head cleaning cycle proceedure varies for each printer brand, so refer to your printer owner’s manual for specific instructions to find yours. Check the index first.

If you don’t have your owner’s manual anymore, you can check our your printer manufacturers website.  Most likely, they will have your printer manual online.

There are times however, when a few standard head cleaning routines don’t seem to solve the problem.  A stubborn printhead clog like this can be persistant enough to make you want to rip out your hair.

For times like these, you’ll need to pull out the big guns!

For stubborn inkjet printhead clogs, there are various cleaners out there specifically for this purpose.  These cleaners are formulated to disolve dried or “gummy” ink which may have accumulated from infrequent printer use, or even just a general build-up over time.

I personally brought an old printer “back from the dead” using a product called ‘Clog Buster’.  It was a printer I had purchased off of eBay which apparently hadn’t been used in awhile.  I spent a few hours trying to revive the printer, and ‘Clog Buster’ was the only thing that worked when nothing else did.

The only downside with using a cleaning product like this however, is that you usually don’t have it in your immediate possession when the clog hits.

Unless you have some already on hand, you’ll have to wait for it to be shipped to you.  In the meantime, your printing project will have to remain on pause until it arrives.

(But maybe I can help…)

The good news is that you MAY be able to solve the problem using some basic household products.  In fact, Windex glass cleaner can actually work well for dissolving dried ink.  What’s the secret ingredient?

Ammonia

Tough printhead clogs can usually be brought into submission by soaking the printhead in a solution of 50/50% ammonia and distilled water.

A important word of warning…  Ammonia is potent and powerful stuff.  When working with ammonia, always make sure you’ve got adequate ventilation, and avoid mixing it with other chemicals.  Very important.

So, if your printhead is located on the inkjet cartridge itself, you’ll want to soak the printhead in the 50/50 solution for an hour or two.

If the printhead unit is located inside your inkjet printer itself, then you’ll first need to remove the inkjet cartridges.

After those are removed, put some of the solution into the top of the printhead (directly into the nozzle holes) and let it sit a few hours.

Go ahead and put a little more into the printhead resting seat.  (This is the rubber rectangle part that seals off the printhead unit while the carriage is in it’s resting position.)

If this initial soaking doesn’t work, then repeat another time using 100% ammonia for up to one hour.  Afterward, make sure to rinse completely with distilled water.

If the clog doesn’t immediately clear, go ahead and let the printer sit overnight and try it again the next day.  Sometimes the clog will breakdown slowly and release later as the ammonia takes it’s toll.

Finally, for those of you wondering about the effectiveness of using alcohol to unclog cartridges and printhead — here’s a quick note…

Alcohol won’t work as well as ammonia, but may work better than a few cleaning cycles.  The downside is that alcohol may actually dry out the plastics and metals in the printhead.

This could actually increase the chances of clogging later on down the road.  So try to avoid alcohol if possible.

If you aren’t into all of the new digital ways to share photos, you can always print them out.

Or, even if you have all of these cool digital photo sharing gadgets, you can’t really scrapbook a digital keychain.

The Canon Pixma Mini 320 Photo Printer is the perfect solution for your digital woes.

The first thing that I noticed about the printer is the sleek design. It looks like it could be made by Apple, because it has that sleek, shiny, white look happening.

It includes a viewing screen for viewing photos, which is a must. I have a printer without this, so we either have to create an SD card with only the photos that we want to print, and then print them all or guess what number corresponds to what photo. It’s not a fun game.

We frequently end up with a bunch of photos that we don’t want. Paper and ink are both very expensive, so seeing what you print beforehand is a good thing.

The Canon Pixma Mini 320 Photo Printer is the perfect for traveling or going to scrapbook parties. It is quite small, so you can bring it just about anywhere.

If you’re at a party, you can have the photos printed and handed out before the party is over. On vacation? This little gizmo will follow you there too. It includes a revolutionary feature – a handle! You can carry it just about anywhere.

Print from digital cameras, memory cards, or cell phones. With an optional bluetooth adapter, you can print high quality photos from just about anything in a matter of seconds.

It claims that it prints at a ’9600 x 2400 dpi’, but for this feature to be fully utilized, the print has to be connected to a computer.

Canon’s new addition to their line of printers is Canon Selphy CP760 Printer. It is an upgrade over the inkjet printers and is a dye sublimation photo printer.

It was created keeping in mind its target audience which are mainly families and children as it is very easy to operate and prints excellent quality photos quickly.

The most important feature of this printer is that you don’t need a computer to print. You can easily do so with memory card, USB drive, a digital camera enabled with PictBridge or via a Bluetooth interface.

Canon has added value to the printer by appealing to the instant gratification need of the customers and hence this printer is very famous with family people and people love to carry it around with them.

CP760 is much smaller than the regular printer, just 3.3 inches tall and 7.9 inches wide, and hence it doesn’t support printing on regular sheets of paper.

It uses a 4-by-6 inch paper instead. When you purchase the printer you will receive some trial sheets of 4-by-6 paper along with a wired power adapter and a paper cassette.

You have the option to preview the pictures before actually printing them through a 2.5 inch TFT display on the top of the unit.

In addition, there are nine rubber buttons adjacent to the screen which helps you navigate the menu.

There are also some auto-editing options available such as Red-eye Elimination, Portrait Image Optimize, and Scene Select.

The CP760 uses a dye sublimation ink technology as opposed to the regular ink technology which is supposed to protect the pictures for as long as 100 years.

The dye sublimation process ensures that the paper makes four passes through the machine, the first three lay down the base colors, cyan, magenta, and yellow and the last pass overcoats the image with a thin layer to prevent any discoloration and extend the durability.

All in all, Canon Selphy CP760 is an excellent product for an amateur photographer and a home user.

Printer is a peripheral used to produce or print hard copy of documents (text or illustrations) stored in an electronic form or soft copy to paper or transparencies.

It is one of the most essential computer peripherals because it helps users to have a hard copy of any documents they want to have.

A printer is connected to a computer through a printer cable (LPT1) or USB cable.  There are also network computers that have built in network interfaces to enable printing services for network users.

Modern network printers have the all-in-one capability to scan, print, convert to .PDF documents, photocopy, fax and email documents to users connected on the network.

These kinds of printers are used in medium to enterprises businesses.  There are also all-in-one printers that can be used in home and small business networks.

Some of the commonly used printers are the following:

• Dot-matrix printer – this kind of printer creates characters by striking pins against an ink ribbon.  Each pin creates a dot, and combination of dots form characters and illustrations.
• Ink-jet printer – it uses ink to print texts and illustrations.  It produces high quality text and graphics.  This kind of printer is usually used in home and offices.
• Laser printer – this kind of printer produces very high quality text and graphics.  Its technology is similar to copy machines.  It can be used also in home, offices, and photo printing business.

A typical computer should have a printer on hand. There are all sorts of computer printer characteristics to look into first.

The type of printer that is used is one of the characteristics to consider. This includes the printing quality and the speed of the printing. Multiple services, including scanning and faxing, can take place from a printer too.

Here is a look into these computer printer characteristics.

• The type of the printer
  • The dot matrix printer is still used in some places

  This is where pixels are printed to form a single image. However, more advanced technologies are being used. For instance, the toner based printer uses static electricity to move the toner into the paper for printing and then heat is applied to keep it on the paper.

  • The inkjet printer is the most common printer on the market today

  This is where small bits of ink are printed onto a piece of paper. Each bit of ink will be attached via a small electric charge.

  • Laser printers are becoming popular too

  These can work with toner in that the LEDs in the printer can get the toner to stick to the paper. Inkless printers are currently in development as well.

  Dye crystals are used to be heated into the area between the two layers of the paper. This is a process in development though, as the print has been known to fade quickly in trial tests.

• Printing Quality

The quality that a printer will be capable of handling will be measured by its dpi, or dots per inch.

The dpi readout will be based on the ability of the printer to be able to print high quality images. For instance, a typical printer on the market will have a dpi readout of 600×600.

This means that there will be 600 dots per inch on both the vertical and horizontal parts of the page. 4800×1200 is becoming a standard on some of the higher end printers these days, and some will even go as high as 9600×2400 in quality.

• Printing Speed

The number of pages per minute that it will be able to print measures the speed. This speed will be different based on whether or not black and white pages or color pages are going to be printed.

Some printers can handle up to thirty black and white pages in a minute and eight color pages in a minute, for instance.

• Multiple features on a printer

Some printers are able to handle scanning or fax technologies. Some will also be able to copy pages right from the printer without a connection to anything. CD and DVD label printing is also featured on some of these newer printers.

Those are the computer printer characteristics to think about when buying a new printer. The type of printer, its quality output and the speed of the printer are all important. Additional services may be considered too.

By using these considerations, it will be easier to find a printer that is right for one’s specific needs.

Any business or home now requires a printer. The new fashion of printer is the all in one types is made of with WorkForce from Epson.

Epson WorkForce fresh line of printers and all-in-ones, engineered for the tiny business and home office. You of course do get laser quality prints at amazing speeds that make you look you excellent.

This astounding all in one rapidly gives out prints and copies, plus laser class text, allowing you to make eye-catching proposal and inspiring brochures, in house and on demand.

The WorkForce 500 is prepared to grip what on earth comes its way, whether you have need of scanning a proposal into editable text, faxing a presentation, or enlarging that family photo.

In addition, it uses up to 3 times less power than a laser printer. This amazing piece has the right features, the correct price, and beyond doubt extraordinary results, that is the WorkForce 500 just for you.

Features Of the WorkForce 500

1. With This amazing all in one you get 5 great options like the Printing, copying, scanning, fax and photo; OCR and original software included along with the printer.
2. You can save considerable amount of time with the Print speeds up to 33 ppm in black and color, which will really give you amazing output in a very short time.
3. This amazing piece also has the feature of printing photos without a computer with the help of Built-in memory card slots.

This is an amazing printer, which will be of great help whether you are at home, or office and can considerably help you in your day-to-day working and the price is very reasonable.

This is one of the most popular products of Epson and is becoming popular by every passing day. You can always go in for this multi functionality printer, which will enhance your work.

Today’s printers have developed to very conspicuous point. Printers began with dot-matrix kind, which was so difficult to utilize.

The dot-matrix printers are the kinds of printers, which print so noisily and it is complicated to provide for the paper within them.

At present, laser printers & inkjet printers have reinstated dot-matrix printers. How do you select the best printer for function? Below are some essential traits you must try for while selecting a printer.

The most essential thing to be taken into consideration is resolution. The resolution is a number of spots a printer types in one square-inch. Your used dot-matrix printer might not type in an elevated resolution.

The Ink-jet printers are good for this. A perfect printer of high resolution will be able to create 1440×720 dpi.

Everyday, the expenditure of the printer must be taken into consideration as well. The rate of the printer is extremely essential particularly if you are utilizing it in workplace.

Laser printers are best in this case; the 80-100 page files can be copy written in the very short period. Laser printers are too commercial to work since their sealed units are not changed very often.

Printers, which have image-lab-service are necessary if you want a printer which can type high resolution pictures in image paper.

For people who often utilize printers for typing images must get printers of a dye-sublimation kind. Using this kind of printer, the spots are more flexible, so making the pictures appears sharper.

The size of printout per minute is necessary if you are typing huge numbers of files in black & white. Printers which is using the inferior resolution of up to 400×400 dpi can print up to seventy pages in black & white in one minute.