Posts tagged ‘small printers’

What is Best Option? A Printer and a Scanner or a Combo?

By , 2 February, 2010, No Comment

What is best is relative. Everyone has different needs. Similarly, everyone has different printing and scanning needs.

If your printing needs far exceed your needs for scanning, it is a good idea to invest in a printer. Make sure that the printer is capable of handling heavy tasks. There are printers in the market that offer greater paper handling flexibility with the use of extra paper trays. Aside from the capacity, be sure to invest in a printer that is capable of printing at high speeds. A minimum of 30 pages per minute should be enough. While you’re at it, go for laser printers. They offer superior quality and cheaper printing cost per page compared to inkjet printers. This would make a reasonable choice if you were into mass-producing booklets, flyers or brochures.

In the same way, if your scanning needs are greater than your printing needs, then go for a dedicated scanner. Modern dedicated scanners are capable of scanning resolutions as high as 4800 x 9600 dots per inch. With this resolution, you can make sure that the quality of the pictures you are scanning is preserved. This only applies to scanning pictures. If you are into scanning a lot of documents, go for the scanner that has an automatic document feeder with high capacity. This way, it will be more convenient since you don’t have to feed the pages individually.

Both options above are applicable for offices especially if they are into the business of printing or scanning. However, if your business involves a lot of simultaneous printing and scanning, you should invest in both devices. Get a great printer as well as a great scanner.

However, if all you want is a home printer, then you should take advantage of multifunctional printers. Buying a small printer scanner is much cheaper than buying a printer and a scanner. In addition, you get to save space since you only have to allocate space for one device.

Modern multi-functional printers already offer high-resolution printing as well as high resolution scanning. Take for example Canon’s Pixma MX330. In color, it prints at a speed of 4.5 images per minute at a resolution of 4800 x 1200 dots per inch. It has an optical scanning resolution of 1200 x 2400 dpi. These figures should be enough for you to provide decent, if not high quality prints, as well as acceptable images. If having these printing and scanning results are enough for you, then a small printer scanner is all you need and not a high-speed printer or scanner.

Unless your business revolves around printing or scanning, the best option for you is a combination of both. Get a multifunctional printer.

Printing Made Portable by the Pixma iP100

By , 8 January, 2010, No Comment

If you do a lot of computer work on the road, then you know the value of bringing your devices with you. More often than not, the mobile worker has all the portable incarnations of various desktop devices. There are so many devices that would work seamlessly with your laptop on the road. But for most of us, when printing is concerned, we are stuck with getting home and plugging our laptops to our trusty desktop printer.

Enter the portable Canon Pixma iP100 printer. With its small size and very lightweight, you might think that this is a crappy stripped-down version of its desktop counterpart. If you could get your hands on it though, you would see that your first impressions are quite wrong. For getting prints done, these laptop printers can certainly handle it well. With a 5-color ink system, it prints out clear and vivid text documents and really nice-looking pictures. How does this little printer get away with amazing prints?

As I have mentioned, it has a 5-color ink system, which has two types of black ink alongside the usual cyan, magenta, and yellow ink banks. One of the black inks is pigment based, which produces very sharp text, while the other black ink is specifically made for use with photographs. And while the Canon Pixma iP100 produces stunning printouts, it also does it quickly.

For black and white text-heavy prints, this little beast can manage 20 pages per minute on normal letter-size paper (8 ½ x 11 inch). For color photographic prints, it can do up to 14 pages per minute. For truly photo-quality pictures, it has a print resolution of 9600 X 2400 dots per inch. Your photographs will come out with much more detail and with much less artifacts.

To those who are interested in using this printer away from the power outlet, you will be glad to know that a laptop printer has an option for a battery pack. It can last up to 3 hours, which is more than adequate for regular printing jobs. This translates to about 290 pages of continuous printing. And for the people who use their cars as a mobile office, Canon also offers a Car Kit, which can plug into a cigarette lighter socket.

Canon truly must have travelling persons in mind when designing this sleek mobile printer. With its small stature and lightweight, it can even fit into most good-sized laptop bags. Carrying it around is also a breeze, since it weighs only at 4.4 pounds.

Even with its lightweight, the Canon Pixma iP100 is heavily loaded with features to make it truly versatile. USB PictBridge Support comes standard, with optional Bluetooth and IrDA connectivity to enable it to print without a computer. It is Energy Star Qualified, which means it is really energy-efficient.

This is the printer to have if you need to have great quality prints done on the last minute. With loads of features, this mobile printer is the perfect companion for the traveling professional or hobbyist with a laptop PC or a digital camera.