Staples is counting down until their anniversary with new sales every day. Today, for instance, they have the Canon PIXMA MP170 on sale for $109, down from $129 (there is also a $30 mail-in rebate) and the Brother MFC-8840DN Laser Flatbed on sale for $530. These deals expire at the end of the day and tomorrow there will be a whole new set of products.

You can keep checking back with the deals of the day at this page.

One of Dell’s black inkjet cartridges is the 7Y743, which works in the Dell A940 and 960 printers. Like other common ink cartridges, there are a number of options available for people who are tired of buying a brand new cartridge all the time. Here are your options:

Remanufactured 7Y743 - this is a cartridge that costs less than buying a new one from Dell. A remanufactured 7Y743 cartridge is one that has been refilled to capacity with ink and fitted with a new print head. So you get a refilled cartridge with a recycled outer casing.

Dell OEM 7Y743 - this is the kind that comes with your printer. It is also the one your printer’s software tells you to buy when you are running low. This cartridge is also known as the X0502.

Refill kits - basically, this is the way to save the most money on ink. For the 7Y743, we offer a refill kit that is $10.99 and gives you about two refills. So instead of paying over $30 for a new cartridge, you can pay around $5 per cartridge and refill them yourself. Refilling an ink cartridge isn’t the difficult or messy process that some might think it is.

Refilling service - if you aren’t convinced that refilling your own cartridge is the best way to go, then you can pay someone to do it for you. We offer Renew as our refilling service and it works like this: you purchase the service, you then receive a mailer and then send away your empty cartridge. About a week or so later, you receive a refilled cartridge. This option works for people who are interested in recycling or conserving, but don’t have the time.

If you have an Epson inkjet printer and have ever received an error message when you try to print that say “there was a problem printing to the port. Check to be sure your printer is configured to use a valid port”, then check out this Q & A to see if any of these solutions help you.

With most error messages, your first step should be to check the connections of the printer, and then to cycle the printer to see if the message gets cleared.

As everyone knows, May is National Photo Month. Okay, maybe nobody knows that. But someone who we’re sure knows is the Photo Marketing Association. In honor of National Photo Month, they have compiled a list of five tips on how to improve your photos. Their tips involve the following settings:

1. Flash adjustment - they offer up the basic but important tip to learn how to turn the flash on and off. Sounds simple, but it can make a big difference for certain photos. Many cameras have automatic flash settings, and that can cause the camera to use the flash unnecessarily. Sometimes the flash will come on when there is just a little less light than usual, and in situations like that you might not really need it. Other times, if you are taking pictures indoors, the flash can be too powerful and it can affect the picture too much. Finally, if you want to take long-distance shots at night, you aren’t going to want to use the flash or else you will end up with a picture of the area 10 feet in front of you lit up like a Christmas tree.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lexmark announced today that they were introducing three new multifuction inkjet printers, all of which will be priced under $80. The new models are the Lexmark X3470, X2470 and the X1270.

The Lexmark X3470 prints, scans and copies but does not fax. It is rated at 17 pages per minute, features memory card slots and it has PictBridge to print directly from a camera. It also features a proof sheet, a first for Lexmark. You print out a page with thumbnail previews of your pictures, mark which ones you want to print, then scan that sheet and the machine prints them out. The Lexmark X2470 is basically a less fancy version of the X3470. It has the same basic features and prints at the same speed, but it lacks memory card slots and the proof sheet function. These two machines will use the Lexmark #1 ink cartridge, which combines black and color into one cartridge. Lexmark claims that this helps to eliminate “the cost and hassles of buying multiple cartridges”, but single cartridges like this can present problems for some people. Because the black is made from combining cyan, magenta and yellow, the results can be a little off at times. In the past we have heard some customers say that the black ends up looking a greenish color. It also tends to use up a lot of ink, so the hassle of buying multiple cartridges might just be replaced with the hassle of buying one cartridge more often.

The Lexmark X1270 is basically as no-frills as an all-in-one machine can get. It prints, scans and copies…and that’s about it. It is rated at the same 17ppm as the other two machines for printing black pages, but only 9ppm for color. To be fair, this machine is “under $50″ ($49.99) so expectations can’t be too high. This is a machine for people who want a basic all-in-one but aren’t crazy about extra features or photo printing.

The Lexmark X3470 will retail at $75 after a $25 mail-in rebate and the X2470 will retail at $59. They will be in stores sometime in May.

Lexmark’s new all-in-ones raise the bar on value and ease of use in home printing [Press Release]

Office Depot has the HP Officejet 7410 on sale for $370 after a $30 instant savings and a $100 mail-in rebate. The rebate is good on purchases up until April 29th.

The Officejet 7410 is a color multifunction machine that has a pretty serious amount of features. It combines the office features of some of HP monochrome laser multifunction machines with the photo features of their color multifunctions. So what you get is a wirless inkjet with fast double-sided printing, a high scanning resolution, memory card slots and a pretty serious user interface.

Some of these features might seem out of place in a normal office, but this machine isn’t meant to replace the standard monochrome laser printers you usually find. It is meant for small business or home offices that need to do multiple types of
projects and don’t want to go to Kinkos to do them.

You can find HP Officejet 7410 cartridges on our site.

The second part of the questions we posted a few weeks ago has come out. This time the questions focus on photo printing. HP, Epson, Lexmark, Dell, Brother, Samsung, Xerox, Oki Data and Ricoh all respond to questions sent to them by PC World. They are:

1. Which Printers Can Produce Gallery-Quality Prints?
2. Which Multifunctions Can Print Directly Onto CDs and DVDs?
3. Can You Fine-Tune the Edge Settings on Photo Prints?
4. Is There a Printer That Can Print Slides From Digital Images?

Once again the questions are pretty specific and may not apply to everyone, but there is still good information to be found in the manufacturer’s answers. You will find out that:

• For giclée (large-format, high resolution) prints, your only choices are Epson and HP and the cheapest printer they offer that will do it is $850. So, you learn that it is expensive to try to distribute your own art.
• Surprisingly, currently Epson is the only manufacturer that offers direct printing onto a CD/DVD.
• Samsung, Ricoh, Oki Data and Xerox basically offer no machines for home photo printing, which makes us wonder why they were even included in this section.

Even if these questions don’t apply to you, from the answers you can still get an overall impression about who is the most serious about photo printing. Although Epson seems like the choice based on their answers to these questions, we would still probably vote for Canon as being the top choice for a photo printer. But, the answers do show that Epson means business and they are willing to offer products and features that will attract professionals. You can also tell from these answers that Dell/Lexmark efforts in the photo printing department usually come up pretty short.

Answers to Your Photo Printing Questions [PC World]

Because there are so many photo printers on the market these days, it can be difficult to easily find the one that is right for you. A lot of photo printers advertise features and statistics that might not mean a whole lot to most people. HP has Vivera inks; Epson has UltraChrome. What’s the difference? Who knows. The HP Photosmart 8450 has a resolution of 4800 x 1200; the Epson Stylus R320 has 5760 x 1440. Are you going to notice that difference? Hard to say. With so many minor differences between different models and different manufacturers, it is better to focus on the big issues, like the following:

1. Decide how serious you are about photo printing. You can spend anywhere from $50 to $500 or more on a photo printer, so you need to figure out if this is something you are really interested in or just something you want for occasional use. Unless you are a professional or someone who plans on selling your prints in some way, you probably don’t need to spend over $200. There are plenty of models in that price range and most should give you good results.

2. Figure out which features you will actually use on a regular basis. Photo printers are packed with extra features these days, including color LCDs, memory card slots and inputs for digital cameras. But how often are you really going to use these things? Many of the features advertised on photo printers involve using the printer as a standalone machine - in other words printing without the use of your computer. That may sound neat, but in reality how many people print pictures directly from their camera or memory card without looking at them on their computer? Viewing and editing photos on a 2″ screen is just not very practical. Also, while it does make the printer menu easier to use, you might find that a feature like an LCD has little practical use.

3. Try to narrow it down to one brand. This may be easier said than done, but things will be much easier if you can focus on one brand and not have to worry about comparing different technologies and terminology. Think about your past experiences or what others have told you about their own printers. For instance, if you are sick of your old Epson inkjet printer jamming, then maybe it’s time to try a Canon.

4. Do a side-by-side comparison of specifications and user reviews. While we did say that the descriptions and specifications on photo printers can be confusing, once you have narrowed it down to two or three printers, there is really no other way for you to tell the difference. You can’t properly test out the photo quality yourself, so all you can rely on are the specifications and what others say about the printers. Online user feedback can be slightly skewed sometimes though. One, there might not be enough reviews to get an accurate assesment. Two, people have the tendency to seek out a place to express their frustations rather than their happiness. If you are content with your printer, then you probably aren’t going to go out of your way to find a review site and write up a review about how the photo printer does exactly what it should. But if you are unhappy with it, you will be glad to go through the trouble to let whole world know how much the printer stinks. That being said, if you notice the same comments being repeated at different trusted sources of reviews, like CNET and Amazon, it is probably safe to say they are pretty accurate

5. Do you actually need a dedicated photo printer? Well, of course not. Nobody needs a photo printer. What we mean is do you need a printer that just prints photos well and doesn’t really do much else? Would you be better off buying an all-in-one printer that could also print photos? Each printer manufacturer only has a certain number of inkjet cartridges, so the photo printer you are looking at might use the same cartridges as a more useful multifunction machine. There will be some small differences between the results from different machines, but those differences might be negated by the additional features you get.

The Dell A940 and 960 printers use the 7Y745 color cartridge. Like other common ink cartridges, there are a number of options available for people who are tired of buying a brand new cartridge all the time. Here are your options:

Remanufactured 7Y745 - this is a cartridge that we sell at a price that is lower than Dell’s retail price. A remanufactured 7Y743 cartridge is one that has been refilled to capacity with ink and fitted with a new print head. So you get a refilled cartridge with a recycled outer casing.

Dell OEM 7Y745 - this is the ink cartridge that comes installed in your printer and the one that you would buy directly from Dell. It is the one your printer’s software tells you to buy when you are running low. This cartridge is also known as the X0504.

Refill kits - available for almost all Dell inkjet cartridges, this is the way to save the most money on ink. For the 7Y743, we offer a refill kit that is $14.99 and gives you about four refills. So instead of paying around $40 for a new cartridge, you can pay a few dollars to refill one. Although refilling color cartridges will take a few more minutes than refilling black ones, you will save more money because the cost of buying color cartridges is always higher.

Refilling service - if you aren’t convinced that refilling your own cartridge is the best way to go, then you can pay someone to do it for you. We offer Renew as our refilling service and it works like this: you purchase the service, you then receive a mailer and then send away your empty cartridge. About a week or so later, you receive a refilled cartridge. This option works for people who are interested in recycling or conserving, but don’t have the time.

Amazon has the highly-rated Brother HL-5250DN laser printer for $180 after a $50 rebate. This machine is network ready, is rated at 30 pages per minute and has duplex capability for double-sided printing. This is a good printer for a home office that includes more than one user or a small business, as it makes printer sharing easy and has the speed to handle large jobs. The HL-5250DN is well-reviewed by users who have owned it and by professional reviews that have tested it out. This machine likely outperforms all other in its class, and at $180, would definitely be a very good value.