Today Dell began their recycling program where they will pick up your old computers or peripherals from your house. If you purchase a Dell computer or laptop, they will pick up your old computer and monitor for free, even if it isn’t Dell brand. This is pretty convenient, since getting rid of a computer or monitor can be a pain sometimes, since they can be considering hazardous waste. Since Dell is one of the biggest contributors to computer-related waste, it’s good to see that they are taking a step in the right direction.

By the way - don’t bother recycling ink cartridges or toner with them. Let us handle that.

Dell Product Recycling [Dell.com]

Amazon has the Canon PIXMA MP830 all-in-one on sale for $230. This is just a regular sale, so there is no mail-in rebate or coupon code. This is a very popular printer that we have listed deals for before, but it is a good printer and it is well-reviewed by a lot of customers, so it’s worth reposting when there’s a sale.

The MP830 is rated by Canon at 30 ppm for black and 24ppm color. It has a resolution of 9600 x 2400, which is on the high end for a multifunction. It can copy both sides of a document without the user having to turn the page over and it has the ability to receive a fax with 250 incoming pages. Based on customer feedback, the scanning features of this printer seem to be pretty good, so if you are interested in that you might want to take a look at this machine.

One downside that a few people mentioned is that the ink runs out quickly. This may be because the black cartridge, the CLI-8BK, isn’t as big as some of Canon’s other black cartridges.

You can find Canon MP830 ink on our site.

The short answer is - don’t get it repaired.

A lot of our customers have old HP inkjets that have worked faithfully for years and then have stopped working all of the sudden. They ask if there is a magic solution to fixing it, and if not, where they should take it to get it repaired. Most of the time, our advice to them is to buy a new printer. We don’t want to sound like we are encouraging them to spend money needlessly, because the reality is that buying a new printer is the best option.

For a lot of older printers, beyond running the cleaning cycles and unplugging your printer, there really isn’t a whole lot you can do yourself to fix it. So anything beyond that may require a certified technician to solve the problem. This can mean a flat hourly rate (even if it takes him five minutes to see what’s wrong) and then an additional cost to actually fix the printer. Based on how little new printers cost these days, it’s just not worth trying to get it fixed. In addition to the money, it’s also not worth your time to try to fix your printer yourself, then take it somewhere, then wait for it to be fixed. It’s better to junk your old printer (not literally junk it, but recycle it, of course) and buy a new one. You will also get the benefit of about $50 worth of new ink cartridges.

Epson announced today that they were releasing a new professional wide-format printer, the Stylus Pro 3800. It will use an 8-ink to print photos up to 16 x 20. It will be able to print those giant photos in 5 minutes and 32 seconds, which Epson says is fast. Sounds blazing.

The Stylus Pro 3800 will use three different black cartridges in addition to the usual colors. It will have black, light black and light-light black. Having all three of these black cartridges is supposed to improve the quality of black and white prints, which is why all three aren’t typically found on standard photo printers that casual users would buy. Other than that, the 43-pound Stylus Pro 3800 doesn’t have a whole lot of features, since printers like these are not made for people interested in LCDs and memory card slots. It’s really all about the wide-format capabilities and then the results you are going to get.

This printer will retail at $1295 and it will begin shipping in December. It’s probably safe to say that it won’t be available in your local Wal-Mart, so you will probably have to order it online.

New Epson Stylus Pro 3800 Ink Jet Printer Sets New Standards for Excellence in Professional Imaging Quality, Performance and Price [Press Release]

Amazon has the PIXMA MP530 on sale again for $160. It’s just a regular sale, so no mail-in rebate, and it’s one of those good sales where you have to add the item to your cart to see the low price.

The PIXMA MP530 is an all-in-one printer that Canon rates at 29 ppm in black and 19 ppm in color. It has a printing resolution of up to 9600 x 2400, which is about as high as it gets for a personal inkjet these days. The scanning resolution is 2400 x 1200 and it can print a 4 x 6 in about 51 seconds. It also has a 30-sheet automatic document feeder and a 150-page fax memory. This printer has only been about two months and it is already pretty popular. So far it has a perfect feedback rating on Amazon, so at the moment it seems like the MP530 is a winner.

You can find Canon PIXMA MP530 printer ink on our site.

On Tuesday Brother announced the release of the MFC-845cw, a color all-in-one printer with built-in wireless and also a cordless phone. Brother says this model is the first of its kind to offer this combination of features.

The performance of the MFC-845cw is pretty standard, as Brother rates it at 27 ppm for black 22 ppm for color printing. It has a resolution of up to 6000 x 1200, which is pretty good for an all-in-one machine, and it has a 2.5″ LCD. It also has a 10-page auto document feeder and a digital answering machine that holds up to 29 minutes of messages from telemarketers. The cordless phone that comes with this printer is a 5.8GHZ handset, and Brother says that since it is 5.8GHZ it won’t interfere with the wireless connection on the printer itself. Brother is gracious enough to offer additional handsets (the MFC-845cw can handle a total of four) for the low price of $90.

The MFC-845cw will use LC-51 ink cartridges. It will be priced at $250 and should hit stores next month.

Brother Announces a Color Inkjet All-in-One with Digital Cordless Handset to Provide an Ultimate Wireless Solution [Press Release]

This is a pretty common question because a lot of times people don’t care that much about the printer they are getting, they only care about how much it’s going to cost them in the long run. Some people use their inkjets just for documents and very rarely print pictures, and for people like that it doesn’t matter what the printer resolution is or how big the LCD or any of that jazz.

Well the answer to this is: there is no answer. There is no one printer that stands above all others in terms of its ink costs. Now before you get too angry for that big tease…there are certain things you can look for to find the models with the cheapest ink costs.

1. Look for printers with individual ink cartridges
2. Look for printers with photo specific cartridges
3. Do not buy a Lexmark/Dell
4. Only buy an HP if you plan on refilling

Canon and Epson are the main ones for individual ink cartridges, although HP has introduced a few models in the last year or so that feature individual cartridges. Printers with separate cartridges for photo colors help you save your regular colors for when you are doing color printing you don’t care about. You will never save on ink with a Lexmark or a Dell printer, so don’t even try. Finally, as we have mentioned before, HP cartridges keep getting smaller and smaller, to the point where their ink costs twice as much ($3.60/ml vs. $1.85/ml) as it did just a few years ago. At the same time, you can save a lot of money with HPs by refilling the cartridges, so operating them is either pretty expensive or really cheap.

The short answer to this is probably to just buy a Canon, because they have individual ink cartridges that are usually cheaper than all other manufacturers, and most cost per page test results (like this one, for example) favor Canon printers.

Amazon has the HP Photosmart 428 GoGo Photo Studio on sale for $100 after rebate. The sale price is $130 and then there is a mail-in rebate that’s good until 9/30.
The GoGo Studio thing means that it is a photo printer and a digital camera. So this package includes the Photosmart 420 and then the M517 5.2-megapixel digital camera. The M517 camera features 2″ LCD display to edit your pictures without a computer, which is basically the idea of having this whole mini studio. When you aren’t using the camera, you dock it on the printer and it charges.

To be honest, this isn’t the greatest camera ever created, but you are basically getting it for free with the printer, so there isn’t too much to complain about. This is a relatively recent model and it is has received good reviews from Amazon users, so it sounds like a good bargain. If you need Photosmart 428 ink, you know where to go.

Is MySpace the worst site on the internet, or is it actually the best? Some casual users of it probably think it’s the worst and millions of teenagers would probably argue that it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to the internet….or maybe to the world. Well, PC World came out with a list of the 25 worst sites ever, and MySpace is #1 on their list. Here are their top 5:

5. AllAdvantage
4. CD Universe
3. Cartoonnetwok.com
2. CyberRebate
1. MySpace.com

MySpace came in at #1 based mostly on usability issues. Anyone that has used it knows of its poor design, which includes frequent error pages, cluttered personal profile pages, security issues and slow loading times at peak hours. Of course, none of this means anything to the (supposed) 90 million people who use the site. Part of the reason that people like MySpace is because they can personalize their pages, which ironically is one of the reasons why the site is often difficult to navigate through. Pages choked with pictures, sounds and videos are part of what slows MySpace down and the cause of a lot of errors.

Other than MySpace, most of those names probably aren’t too recognizable. CyberRebate is on the list not because they had a bad site, but because they had a bad business. They offered 100% rebates on products, as long as you purchased them at 10x the regular price and waited months for your rebate. There are some other interesting tales of long-forgotten companies like the immortal Pets.com.

If anyone wants to add their worst site, feel free to leave a comment (as long as it isn’t ours, which of course makes every Top 10 Greatest Web Sites Ever Created in History list).

The 25 Worst Web Sites [PC World]