We have wirless everything these days, so why not wireless printing? Well, for whatever reason wireless printing hasn’t really kept up with the rapid growth. There are currently only a few truly wireless models on the market today, and most of them are geared towards business users. Currently you will not find any entry level inkjets that have wireless capability. Maybe no one really wants to print wireless, but there has to be some people out there who use laptops in their house that aren’t always hooked up to a printer.

For those people who do use a wireless network at home, you can pick up something like this. Any brand will do, but Linksys is one of the main ones. You just hook up the USB cable from your printer into the print server, and then you can be connected to your wireless router. It’s a little more complicated than just having a wireless printer, but these days you do what you gotta do.

Firefox 2.0 was released the other day and everyone should get it. They improved a few things, but it’s not really all the different from the older versions. But it is a good opportunity for people who haven’t tried it before to see how cool it is. It is definitely an improvement over Internet Explorer and it will help speed up browsing the web.

Get it here.

Buy.com has the HP Photosmart 8250 on sale for $95. There is no shipping and tax in only a few states, so for a lot of people that will be the final price. Right now it’s selling for $120 on Amazon, so this is a pretty good discount.

The two main draws of the Photosmart 8250 are its speed and the fact that it uses individual ink cartridges. HP introduced these cartridges last year but there still aren’t that many printers that use them. This is too bad for people who use HP printers because the cost of their ink goes up almost every year, so individual ink cartridges would be a big bonus.

HP rates the 8250 at 32 ppm for black and 31 ppm for color. They call it the world’s fastest photo printer, but then they also make a point of noting that the official speeds are specifically from text printing, something that most other printers do not note. It’s usually just 32 ppm black, but for the 8250 it’s “32 ppm black text”. HP claims that it can print a 4 x 6 photo in as little as 14 seconds, which kind of sounds like hogwash, but who are we to argue? It’s got all the usual connectivity options, two-sided printing, a special 4 x 6 photo paper tray for dedicated prints and a 2.5″ LCD. It is also a wide-format printer which can print up to 8.5 x 24.

Here is a fancy picture on how its ink stystem works. AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

J.D. Power and Associates released a study that said that Canon ranked the highest in customer satisfaction. First of all, I didn’t know that J.D. Power and Associates did anything besides give awards to crappy Dodges. Second of all, it’s not too surprising that Canon had the highest satisfaction. We’ve seen that for years and once you buy a Canon you are pretty easily converted.

What is surprising is the rest of the results: Lexmark and Dell came in at third and fourth, respective. Canon scored 765 out of 1000 to win it, and right behind them was Ricoh at 764 (I guess all three Ricoh owners out there said they liked them). Then next was Lexmark with 757 points and Dell with 743. To say that out of 1000 points Canon is only 22 points better than Lexmark is pretty ridiculous. That’s like saying Canon is only 2% better. The results were based on a survey of “business and IT decision makers” and apparently they have differing opinions from home users. In addition to being pretty unpopular with home users, Lexmark and especially Dell have never really been known for business machines. Dell makes laser printers, but they do not make any jumbo-sized copiers or laser printers that you might find in an office.

HP got 741 points and Epson was wayyy down the list with 692, only one point above last place finished Konica-Minolta. We know that Epson inkjets can be pretty tempermental, but apparently those IT decision makers had very little tolerance for them. The industry average was 741, so HP was 100% average and Epson was downright terrible. Epson isn’t really known for their laser products and most of their multifunction machines are not suited for business use, so that might explain their low ranking.

J.D. Power and Associates Reports: Canon Ranks Highest in Overall Business Customer Satisfaction With Printers [Press Release]

Lexmark announced today that their earnings had increased slightly over last year, but not enough to make their stock go up. Lexmark has been suffering lately due to HP’s continued dominance and their own continued stinkiness.

In the past year they have cut 20% of their inkjet sales in order to get rid of sales that weren’t generating long-term profits for them. The sales that they cut out were bundled sales, meaning deals where they gave away a printer with a computer. Those deals used to be all the rage, but a lot of people wised up to them and they don’t seem to be as popular as they once were. Since Lexmark doesn’t make their own computers, they don’t have the advantage that HP has where they can bombard people with bundles everywhere they go. Lexmark has to rely on the printers that they sell to Dell in order to sell any bundles, and by doing that they lose any value from ink cartridges purchased down the road.

Lexmark said that “consumers fail to buy enough ink cartridges and supplies over the products’ lifetimes to offset low profit margins on the initial piece of hardware”. Well, the reason for that is probably that Lexmark printers, especially those you get for free, are junk and they won’t last a few years. If someone’s Lexmark inkjet breaks, they probably aren’t going to be buying a whole lot of ink for it. Also, Lexmark (along with Dell) leads the way in “most negative responses to ink prices” when people go to buy their first set of cartridges. We have heard from lots of people who got a Lexmark inkjet for free/very little who immediately abandon the printer once they see the $40 cartridges.

Apparently Lexmark decided to focus on all-in-one printers and color laser printers, two things they really haven’t been known for the in the past but two areas where the most profits are found. So don’t hold your breath waiting for that free Lexmark bundled with your shiny new computer.

Lexmark working hard to right itself [Kentucky.com]

CNET has reviewed one of the new “hi-definition” printers that Epson just released, the Stylus Photo R380, and they gave it a pretty good review. They gave it a 7.3 out of 10, which is a very good rating based on their scale.

According to Epson, the main benefit of this printer is speed. It is rated at 32 ppm for black, 30 for color and it can supposedly print a 4 x 6 picture in 13 seconds. Now of course, none of those numbers are truly accurate, but they are still impressive based on the performance of other Epson inkjets. The R380 also has a 3.5″ LCD (basically as big as it gets these days) and the ability to print directly onto CDs or DVDs.

With that giant LCD, Epson wants you to use a whole bunch of features like photo editing and red eye reduction and what not. I’ve always felt like LCDs on inkjets were pretty useless because no one is going to scroll through all their pictures and make adjustments on a tiny screen when they could easily do it on their computer. Why try to get the best version of a picture on a 1″ screen when you can look at it on your 19″ monitor? But, a 3.5″ LCD is pretty big compared to others, and it sounds like Epson has made an effort to make this printer a “home studio” that doesn’t require a computer, so if you are into that then the R380 is for you. For the record, CNET seemed to enjoy using the LCD to print directly from memory cards.

The one problem that the CNET reviewer had with the R380 was the text printing. Epson really bills this as a photo printer, so it’s not too surprising that the text performance is a little lacking - the less expensive HP Photosmart 8250 printed text almost twice as fast as the R380. HP inkjets have always been known for being better at printing text than their competitors, but it’s still worth knowing that if you are looking for a good all-around printer that you might have to look elsewhere. The Stylus Photo R380 is meant for printing good pictures and not really for everyday use.

Right now this printer is selling for $200 regularly and $160 if you use this rebate (PDF). This printer just came out, so there really isn’t any customer feedback at the moment. If you did buy this printer, let us know what you think of it and if the review is accurate.

Buy this printer Buy Epson Stylus R380 inkjet cartridges

Even though they were supposed to come out in September, Epson is now finally shipping their three “high-definition” printers that they announced over the summer. The models are the Epson Stylus Photo R260 and R380 and the Epson Stylus Photo RX580 photo all-in-one.

These three inkjets are supposedly the fastest on the market and Epson says they “offer nearly three times the photo print speeds of comparable HP models.” According to their test, the Epson models could print a 4×6 picture in 32 seconds while it took the HP models 88 seconds. One of the HP’s they compared it with was that Photosmart D7160, which costs about $120. The Stylus Photo R260 is going to retail for $130, so it’s a pretty fair comparison. Incidentally, these tests were conducted by Torrey Pines Research, a local company here in San Diego.

As with any fancy new printer these days, Epson touts some technology they made up and gave a weird name. This time it’s a MicroPiezo print head with DX5 technology. Awesome, huh? Of course it doesn’t really mean anything and the fact that it can produce drops as small as 1.5 picoliters isn’t all that impressive since there are a number of other photo printers on the market that can make that claim. So you kind of just have to trust Epson that this print head is somehow different than every other one before it.

Other than being high definition, these three printers don’t have any unique features you can’t find elsewhere. They all have the standard connectivity features and what not. The Stylus Photo R380 does have a 3.5″ LCD, which is pretty huge, but who knows if people even use those.

Epson Now Shipping Its New Signature ‘Ultra Hi-Definition’ Line of Photo Printers, Bringing Professional-Level Prints at Industry-Leading Print Speeds to Home Photo Enthusiasts [Press Release]

Newegg has the HP LaserJet 3055 on sale for $220 after a whopping $250 mail-in rebate. There is a $21 shipping fee, so the total is about $240. Amazon also has this printer on sale for $250 with the same rebate, so if you prefer ordering from there you can fork over the extra $10. The rebate is good until 10/31.

The LaserJet 3055 is an all-in-one printer that is rated at 19 ppm. It prints, faxes copies and scans and can produce its first page in about eight seconds. It has a resolution up to 1200 x 1200, a 50-page automatic document feeder and a 110-page fax memory. It has a lot of internal memory to handle tasks and it features duplex printing.

This printer isn’t that old, but based on the gigantic rebate, HP is either phasing it out or trying to spark some sales. If you need some LaserJet 3055 toner cartridges, you know where to go.

PC Magazine recently posted their review the Lexmark P350 compact photo printer and they get it surprisingly good marks. It wasn’t like the greatest review ever, but to have a Lexmark photo printer that gets any type positive feedback is pretty surprising.

The P350 is a followup to the P315 photo printer, which PC Magazine said was a disaster. Supposedly the P350 is better in every way than its predecessor. For starters, it comes with a single color ink cartridge, which is usually a bad idea. It isn’t mentioned in the PC Magazine review, but having just a color ink cartridge drastically raises the cost per print. Granted, with a compact photo printer like this you don’t really have an option, but having to use the color cartridge to also produce black really drains it. Moving on…like with the P315, you buy a packet that has paper and a cartridge. You can buy them separately, but that will cost you more. The P350 has all the usual connectivity options that standalone printers have like memory card slots and what not. It comes with a 2.4″ LCD and can print a regular 4 x 6 photo in about 90 seconds.

The main problem they had with it was that the gloss did not come out even on prints. This meant that the appearance of a photo could change based on what angle you looked at it from. Other than that, they didn’t really find any big faults with it. It was a little slower and more expensive than the HP Photosmart A516, which was one of their Editor’s Choice winners. If you have the option, it would probably be better to go with HP just because in general, they make better printers than Lexmark.

Dell announced that they were releasing two new all-in-one printers: the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 926 and the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 966. These two are both upgrades of existing models. The 926 replaces the 924 and the 966 replaces the 964.

Dell rates the 926 at 20 ppm for black and 15 ppm for color. The max resolution is 4800 x 1200 dpi and you have have the choice of printing in four colors or using a photo cartridge for six colors. It is PictBridge enabled and also has memory card slots. It will retail at $100, so it is intended as an entry level model for people who don’t rely on their multifunction for business use.

The 966 is a little more fancy and is rated at 32 ppm for black prints and 23 ppm for color. It has a built-in fax machine and an automatic document feeder, two features that the Dell 926 lacks. It has the same resolution and connectivity options as the 926, but it features a 2.4″ LCD not found on that model. It will retail for $200.

Both printers are currently on sale. Whoopee.

Dell Unveils Two All-In-One Printers at DigitalLife [PC Magazine]