How many times have you needed to hit Print on your computer and you’ve realized that you’re just not connected to a printer?

Physically connecting your computer to the printer of course will mean picking your computer up, making your way to wherever the printer is, or wherever a computer is that is connected to the printer through Ethernet cable.

Why on earth should anyone have to put up with this, when it’s cheap buying and setting up a wireless printer?

Printers are just getting smarter everyday. A wireless printer – one that is able to connect to computers through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi – can be had for as little as $50.

You can park the printer wherever it’s convenient, plug it into the power, and you’re good to go. It’ll just show up on everybody’s computer as a network destination, and anyone can just send print jobs.

If you’re good with setting up a wireless printer, there is no reason to have to wire things up anymore.

Now, unless you have a very old printer, you never have to connect a printer directly to the computer it needs to print from.

Nearly every printer out there has a regular Ethernet port. You just need to connect the printer to a Wi-Fi router that wirelessly connects to every computer in the building, and you’d have yourself a wireless printer just like that.

But that isn’t really as convenient as a real wireless printer.

In some buildings and installations, the router is located somewhere really inconvenient, sometimes in the basement or on another floor.

To have to put the printer next to the router can make little sense in many places. Setting up a wireless printer is the only thing that would work.

Once you have it, you could get your printer and every computer in the building to connect wirelessly to one another.

In some installations, wirelessness in a printer can make even more sense. Consider a small office where there is more than one printer – perhaps one that’s an inexpensive color laser model, one that’s a monochrome laser model, a couple of inkjet models for different levels of quality and so on.

Everyone in the office would want to connect to every one of these printers at different times. A print server would be an excellent idea in this case.

Actually, make that a wireless print server. To think of the kind of wiring you would need to do in such a situation if it weren’t a wireless set up, fairly boggles the mind.

Setting up a Wireless Printer is a post from: Computer Spot

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Undoubtedly, Apple’s iPad has been an unmitigated success from the very moment it was launched about a year ago. Of course, a claim to success isn’t the same thing is a claim to being perfect.

As with any product that makes it on the market for the first time, there are a few areas that need a little polishing. An area of the iPad that has received the most strident complaints ever since the product was launched has to do with its inability to easily print.

The iPad didn’t come to market with an ability to directly establish contact with a wireless printer and print directly to it. To remedy this problem, Apple has been working on a new software standard to go with all of its iOS products – it is called AirPrint.

With AirPrint installed on your iOS device, be it an iPod, an iPhone or an iPad, you’ll now be able to directly and automatically seek out AirPrint-enabled WiFi printers (so far, there are just a few HP printers that are enabled) and print to them.

So this must be a case of having Apple coming through in grand fashion again, right? In most cases, that really is true. The only problem is, you’re limited to perhaps a dozen printers alone for this, all from HP.

A wireless printer should be ePrint-enabled to directly make contact with the AirPrint software. Thankfully, these are not expensive devices to buy. You could find cause to complain though in the way they make you buy a new printer even if you’re perfectly happy with what you already have.

Is there a solution to this? In case you have no intention of buying a replacement for your existing perfectly functioning printer, is there a way you can get your iPad to print easily and directly to just any wireless printer?

In fact, there’s just this kind of solution. You are able to in fact tap any wireless printer that is shared on a Mac or PC to print from your iOS devices. You can do this using AirPrint too. Here’s how you’d go about it on a printer attached to a Windows computer.

In Windows 7, you must manually add AirPrint as an “allowed program” to Windows firewall. You should right away see the printer on Airprint.

You can print wirelessly right away. If you are having problems printinting this way, you will be happy to know that there are all kinds of third-party apps on the app store at that can be of help. Apps like Air Sharing Pro, ePrint and PrintCentral make it all quite effortless.

The many Ways you have of utilizing your iPhone or iPad with a Wireless Printer is a post from: Computer Spot

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You can find a many photo printers in the marketplace today, however the question is-are they worth the money?

There are plenty of points to consider before buying a photo printer to use at home, and before deciding what features you need.

The rise in popularity of home photo printing has resulted in a big increase in the number of models out there. There are small printers which will print only wallet sized prints, others which will do 4×6 prints, yet still others that do 8×10 or larger.

Some might take a long time to print each photo whilst others might be almost instant, though none will print as quickly as they are able to print plain text.

Some printers are designed to work directly with a camera. These printers will have software built in that can interface with the printer and may also have a small LCD viewing screen that will enable you to view the photos before you print them.

All that you need to accomplish is plug your camera in, select the photos to print and away you go and not having to work with a computer as an intermediate stage.

The reason against purchasing a home photo printer is the cost. Initially there is a small investment needed in buying the printer, but the maintenance costs are what really make these uneconomical.

The price of good photo paper that will produce prints which do not fade as time passes or with exposure to the light isn’t small.

There are cheaper papers available but they tend to not produce such good results, that may be prone to both fading over time but also streaking during printing.

Printer ink cartridges are the biggest cost, and the one that’s the most prohibitive to regular home printing. Many printers themselves are relatively cheap, but to buy a full set of color and black inks for them may cost half the price of the printer or more-some costing almost as much as the initial purchase price of the machine.

There are now some printers out there that specifically state that they offer cheaper ink for the life of the printer, and also many generic ink manufacturers.

Still others will refill cartridges for you, but the generic and the refilled cartridges tend to have poor performance compared to brand new, brand name cartridges.

These costs, along with the limitations and poorer quality prints that the printers may produce need to be taken into account together and compared to commercial solutions. There are now online photo printing companies that allow you to upload photos from your home, and they mail the prints to you.

With bulk purchases of pre-paid credits, this can make prints as little as 6c each. There unfortunately isn’t a printer in the market today that can print high quality prints for that price.

This means that it all comes down to convenience. If you want to regularly have prints instantly then a home printer is for you-otherwise, your prints become an expensive habit.

Do You Think That You Need A Photo Printer at Home ? is a post from: Computer Spot

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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.

Epson Picture Mate Photolab & Printer is a post from: Computer Spot

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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.

HP Officejet Pro 8500 Premier Wireless All-in-One Printer is a post from: Computer Spot

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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.

How To Clear A Stubborn Inkjet Printer Clog is a post from: Computer Spot

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Everybody wants to know about the correct inkjet cartridge for his or her printer, but what about printer paper?

Inkjet and laser printers can print on a variety of surfaces, including photo paper, labels, business cards, stickers, and t-shirt transfers.

One of the biggest advantages of laser printers is their ability to churn out quality prints on almost any paper.

However, the same does not apply to inkjet printers. Although most of your inkjet printing probably involves standard white papers, when it comes to this medium, you may have more options than you realise.

Inkjet Printer Paper

Although standard printer paper can do the job as well, your printouts will probably be better if you use paper specifically made for inkjet printers.

The quality of your printouts is affected by two major factors: brightness and absorption.

1. Brightness

When a type of paper is advertised as being brighter than average, it indicates that the surface of the paper is smoother than average. The smoothness of the page determines the amount of light reflected from its surface.

This factor also determines how bright your images appear on the page. The brighter or smoother the printer paper is, the better your printout will appear.

2. Absorption

In this case, if the printer paper absorbs less ink, your document will definitely look better. As the paper absorbs ink, tiny dots on the page may spread outside their borders.

This may cause the edges of text and images on the page to look fuzzy and soggy. To counteract this problem, quality printer papers are coated with a waxy substance that prevents the absorption of ink by the paper.

A well-coated paper allows for more precise and smoother printing. In general, most of the printers on the market print at a higher resolution on coated paper than on standard paper.

Branded Paper – To Buy or Not to Buy

It’s no secret that the big names in printers, such as HP, Canon, and Epson, offer a complete line of inks and papers.

Each company claims that you will get the best results when you use its products with its printers, and warns you to steer clear of products sold by other companies.

Generally speaking, they’re right. In the case of inkjet printers, especially, companies design printers, inks, and papers to work together to yield the best results.

If you use third-party paper with your inkjet printer from a big-name manufacturer, the ink may spread too far into the paper before drying, causing inaccurate colours, lower print resolution, and a dull finish. Plus, it is likely that the prints will fade faster.

The choice, after all, lies with you. Printing great photos from an inkjet printer is a tall order, requiring a perfect match between the ink, paper, and printer to work together; and the companies don’t make it easy on the consumer’s pocket.

You can reach the most economical solution through a little experimentation.

Alternatively, laser printers can print plain text documents or draft-quality graphics with equal ease, and you can stock up on your local office supply store’s bright white copy or laser paper to your heart’s content.

Getting Past the Jargon
To find out if the paper package on the shelf is right for your printer, simply read the fine print that usually lists out the compatible companies and models.

Moreover, if you are interested in high-quality photo printing, you can generally see if a particular paper makes the grade.

For example, some papers may have unusual descriptions such as “swellable” or “cotton rag.” Swellable paper is designed for high-quality photo printing—the coated surface actually swells as it absorbs ink.

Cotton rag is ideal for inkjets that use pigment-based inks; most low-cost inkjet printers, on the other hand, use dye-based ink, so you should steer clear of cotton rag in this instance.

High-quality paper also has a polymer coating—for both dye-based and pigment-based inks—that keeps the ink from spreading, and it protects the ink from fading over time.

However, coated paper can take a number of hours to completely dry your prints. Better quality paper may also be advertised as acid-free and lignin-free; these indicate that your paper is more likely to give you the best image quality and the best overall life span.

Checklist
It is important to remember that most branded photo printer paper from corporate names, including well-known ones, is only suitable for printing at 1440 and 2880 DPI.

Here is a simple checklist to help you when deciding the inkjet photo paper best suited to your needs.

1. Always check the DPI (Dots Per Inch) of the photo printer paper.

DPI is an indicator of how much ink the photo paper can absorb per inch on the page. Using low DPI photo paper for high-resolution printing will result in poor quality prints.

Usually, if the seller does not advertise the DPI of its inkjet photo paper and card, then it is likely that it is very low and therefore a lower grade paper.

2. Check that the photo paper is instant dry.

Cheaper photo paper may not be designed to dry instantaneously and can result in colour running or smudging while the ink is soaking into the paper. Once again, if the seller does not advertise this feature, then it is likely that it is absent.

3. Decide the weight of inkjet photo paper you need.

Although the weight of photo paper and card vary, the most common weights are between 120gsm to 280gsm.

If you are printing in bulk, then 120gsm is usually sufficient and cost effective. If you are printing photographs at home, then 160gsm to 200gsm should suffice. Buy glossy printer paper if you want shiny pictures, and matt paper if shine is not an issue for you.

As a general rule, bigger the weight is, thicker the photo paper or card will be.

How to Choose Printer Paper is a post from: Computer Spot

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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 Pixma mini320 Compact Photo Inkjet Printer is a post from: Computer Spot

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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.

Canon Selphy CP760 Printer is a post from: Computer Spot

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.

Brief Introduction of Computer Printer is a post from: Computer Spot

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