Ever wonder what your printer manufacturer’s official answers are to common questions? Well thanks to Danny Allen over at PC World, you can see what the “company line” is for the following questions:

1. How Do You Solve Inkjet Text Smearing Problems?
2. Are There Multifunction Printers That Support Legal-Size Paper?
3. Which Printers Come With Drivers for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition?
4. Are There Multifunction Printers With Wireless Printing Options?

Granted, these might not be the most common questions/complaints on your mind, but they are pretty standard inquiries and it is interesting to see how printer manufacturers respond to any direct question. The companies involved were HP, Epson, Canon, Brother, Lexmark, Dell, Samsung, Xerox, Oki Data, and Ricoh. Now we know that everyone has been on the edge of their seats waiting for Oki Data and Ricoh to publicly answer burning questions about their machines. So to those people, we say: your time has come.

Some general thoughts about the different manufacturers answers:

-HP gives the most in-depth answers
-Brother gives the most relevant answers
-Dell gives most robotic answers
-Lexmark gives the most vague answers
-Samsung, Ricoh and Oki Data give the most incomplete/useless answers

How Do You Solve Inkjet Text Smearing Problems?

This question probably matters most to our customers. Predictably, a few manufacturers just tell you to buy their more expensive paper, which probably is a legitimate solution in some cases, but probably not the one everyone wanted to hear. The main solution seemed to be using pigment-based ink instead of dye-based ink. Dell offered up an ultra-helpful answer which included “Waiting a few minutes for the paper to dry will obviously help with smearing.”

Are There Multifunction Printers With Wireless Printing Options?

For those who are interested in having an all-in-one machine which is wireless, you will find some laser printers but only a small number of inkjets. Canon only has one, HP only a couple and Epson doesn’t have any. Lexmark tries to pull a fast one by responding that all their all-in-one printers “have the ability to print wirelessly through a 802.11g print server.” Fascinating, except that wasn’t really the question. If you hook up any printer on the market today to a printer server, you can print wirelessly. That doesn’t mean that the printer itself is wireless.

In the end, it is a very interesting article. Well, very interesting for us, and probably pretty interesting for consumers. We find it interesting because it gives a peak at the attitude with which each manufacturer approaches things. HP providing the most, Brother providing good quality with what they can, Dell not really caring, Ricoh just happy to serve their niche, etc.

The Print Shop: Printer Makers Answer Your Urgent Questions [PC World]