No, not really….but that’s what the headline for this article says. It discusses how office stores like Staples are trying to lure people in by offering a wider selection of gadgets and electronics and what not. This past weekend, Staples started showing ads featuring people buying gifts like a shredder and other “unexpected gifts.”

Personally I wouldn’t really think of going to Staples to do too much Christmas shopping, but as the article mentions, they are now selling things like LCD TVs and other electonics that you would normally find elsewhere. Maybe you have someone in your family that gets really excited about office things and would be very happy with a gift from Staples. When you think about how much people hate to buy ink cartridges for themselves, maybe they would make a good gift…….

All I want for Christmas is … a new ink cartridge? [Aust-American Statesman]

Amazon has the Brother MFC-7220 on sale for $150. There is no rebate, so it’s just a regular sale price (that can disappear at any time).

The MFC-7220 is an all-in-one laser printer that also faxes and has an actual phone, too. Brother rates it at 20 ppm print speed and it has a resolution of up to 1200 x 600 dpi. It has a scanning resolution of 200 x 400 and it takes six seconds per page to scan. It has a 20-sheet automatic document feeder and it uses the TN350 toner cartridge. Almost all Brother multifunction machines are good quality and they are typically less expensive to operate than ones from HP.

If you need Brother MFC-7220 toner cartridges, you can go to our site.

The PIXMA MP960 is one of Canon’s more recent PIXMA updates and also one of their more expensive ones. It was released back in September as a replacement for the PIXMA MP950, which means that it has mostly all the same features. But with a starting retail price of $400, it is a couple hundred dollars more than the average PIXMA.

Canon rates the all-in-one MP960 at 30 ppm in black and 22 ppm in color. It has seven individual ink tanks and a resolution up to 9600 x 2400, which is basically as high as standard inkjets get these days. Canon says that you can print borderless 4 x 6″ photo lab quality” prints in about 35 seconds, which is about twice as fast as its predecessor (although the text speed is roughly the same). The scanning speed of the MP960 is also roughly the same as the MP950. One of the big features of the this printer is the fact that it has two paper trays and built-in duplexing, otherwise known as two-sided printing. This is an important feature if you plan on using your all-in-one for business purposes and it seems like more and more printers these days include this feature. In addition to that, the MP960 has all the usual connectivity options, including PictBridge. Canon touts their Easy-Scroll Wheel, which you use to scroll through the menu on the 3.5″ LCD.

CNET recently review the MP960 and they gave it a 7.7, which translates to “very good” for them. They liked the speed and quality of the MP960’s prints , the image editing options and the two-sided printing. They didn’t like the scan quality (seems like they are always unhappy with that) and the high price of the printer. They may have a point on the high price, since this model is so much higher than other PIXMAs yet it doesn’t do a whole lot more. So far it doesn’t appear as though a lot of people have purchased this model, probably due to the price, so customer feedback on it is limited.

If you own this printer, please leave some feedback and let others know what you think. If you already own it and need Canon PIXMA MP960 ink cartridges, then you know where to go.

Buy this printer Buy Canon PIXMA MP960 cartridges

We have added a whole bunch of new Epson cartridges to our site. A lot of people have been looking for cartridges for the Stylus CX5000 and CX6000 and we finally have some. The following cartridges work with the Stylus CX5000 and Stylus CX6000:

T069120 black
T069220 cyan
T069320 magenta
T069420 yellow

As of 2/7/2007 we have also added compatible brand cartridges to our offering. These compatible cartridges replace the following Epson cartridge numbers.

T069120 black
T069220 cyan
T069320 magenta
T069420 yellow

We have also added Epson Stylus Photo R380 cartridges, Stylus Photo R260 cartridges and Stylus Photo RX580 cartridges.

T078120 black
T078220 cyan
T078320 magenta
T078420 yellow
T078520 light cyan
T078620 light magenta

Huzzah!

Wondering which one is better? Well check out this article and you’ll see that they think pigment-based inks are the best. That’s not really too big of a secret to professionals, but it’s a useful bit of information for those who might not be professionals but are still serious about their pictures. Printers that use pigment-based inks are more common than they were a few years ago, but they still aren’t the most common. The reason for that is that dye-based inks are cheaper and they produce a bigger range of colors than pigmented inks. For most people, that’s good enough. But for those who are interested in the longevity of their prints, pigment-based inks are a must. Dye-based inks are pretty much guaranteed to fade away faster than pigmented inks, but of course that also depends on which paper you use and how your photos are stored.

Pigment vs. dye inks - Which is best? [Macworld]

Amazon has the HP Officejet 6310 on sale for $191. There are no rebates as this is just a regular sale. This is the lowest price we’ve seen so far, as just a couple of months ago the sale price was well over $200.

The Officejet 6310 is an all-in-one printer that includes a fax machine. It’s been on the market for about nine months and it’s gotten pretty good reviews since then. It is rated at 30 pages per minute for black and 24 ppm color and it has a resolution of up to 4800 x 1200. It has a 35-page automatic document feeder and it has all the features that allow you to print directly from your digital camera like memory card slots and PictBridge. This printer has a lot of features and is pretty complete, but you probably shouldn’t really rely on it as a photo printer. It’s designed more for a home office, so while it can print pretty good pictures, it’s not a real photo printer.

You can read CNET’s review of it here.

If you already own the Officejet 6310 you can leave us some feedback about it. If you need Officejet 6310 cartridges, you can go to our site.

It’s the end of the day on Friday so it’s time for an off-topic post. Bill Watkins is the CEO of Seagate, one of the biggest manufacturers of hard drives on the market. He was in San Francisco yesterday for a dinner and an interview with Fortune magazine. It was a pretty candid interview, and as the article mentions, a refreshing change from most other boring CEO interviews. The main highlight was his quote about his company’s overall strategy:

“Let’s face it, we’re not changing the world. We’re building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn.”

It’s funny because it’s true. The rest of the interview is also interesting, including his takes on other tech giants like Apple and Microsoft, but obviously it’s the above quote that will grab all the headlines.

Seagate CEO: I help people “watch porn” [CNNMoney.com]