That’s what a former employee of HP is saying. Karl Kamb, who is being sued by HP, filed his own lawsuit today that HP paid someone to spy on Dell just prior to their entry into the printer market. HP sued Kamb in 2005, saying that he was secretly involved in a rival company while still working and HP and that he stole secrets, resources and possibly money from HP.

Back around the end of 2002 when Dell was about to enter the inkjet printer market, HP allegedly paid Katsumi Iizuka, a former Dell president, to supply them with information. HP funneled those payments through a corporation that Iizuka set up. HP doesn’t deny that they hired him or that they paid fees to his company, they just deny that they were spying. Supposedly there are some emails where Iizuka gives out inside info like release dates for Dell printers. All this is just another headache for HP in their string of their troubles last year with spying.

HP accused of spying on Dell’s printer plans [CNET]

Ah, the eternal question. Well, we might have an answer for you. We just updated our printer guide explaining which manufacturer is best for you. It breaks down the major manufacturers (HP, Epson and Canon) and gives pros and cons for each one, along with information on other brands like Lexmark and Dell.

Here’s a sneak peek:

HP
Pros - availability, dependability, name recognition
Cons - no individual ink cartridges on almost all models, long term costs

Epson
Pros - good photo printing, individual ink cartridges
Cons - some maintenance issues, can’t refill cartridges, machine may not last forever

Canon
Pros - excellent photo printing, reliability
Cons - some lack of selection/availability of machines

Now, go….read.

Since compact/portable/snapshot photo printers seem to be growing in popularity, people are probably beginning to wonder what the best model is. Up until recently, there wasn’t a huge selection of models and out of those, there really wasn’t any model that was declared the best by the public. The reviews and reactions to the models out there mostly fell in line with what you’d expect based on the manufacturer: Epson made good stuff, HP made pretty good stuff, Canon made good stuff in limited quantities and Lexmark basically made junk.

We haven’t really received a lot of feedback from our customers/readers as to what they think about certain compact photo printers, so I’ll just take a look at what’s availble out the Net.

- the top three compact photo printers according to CNET are the HP Photosmart 475, the Epson PictureMate Flash 280 and the Epson PictureMate Snap

- the top three selling compact photo printers on Amazon are the Canon iP90, the Canon SELPHY DS810 Photo Printer and the Epson PictureMate Deluxe

- this thing on about.com says that the top three are Canon i70/i80/i90, the HP Photosmart 375 and the Epson PictureMate Personal

Overall, it seems like the Epson PictureMate series has been rated pretty well by both professional reviewers and customers (all but the PictureMate Pal, which is an entry-level model that isn’t worth the small savings). Like most of their inkjet printers, HP compact photo printers perform pretty well but are never the best available. It seems like it’s a good idea to stay away from Kodak printers, just because I’ve only seen one get a good review and then most others get only decent reviews. It’s really not worth it to get a Kodak because you have so many other reliable options like Canon and Epson available. Plus, since some of these printers use their own ink/paper and not standard ink cartridges, you don’t want to be hunting around for some weird Kodak products that aren’t sold anywhere.

Newegg has the HP LaserJet 1018 on sale for $80 after a $20 coupon code. The regular price is $100 and then you use coupon code EMC102HPLASR to get the $20 off. Right now there is free ship in the Continental U.S.

The LaserJet 1018 hit the market last summer and at the time HP advertised it as the smaller laser printer available. That might have been true, although it seems like HP is always marketing their printers as the ___ in the world. The LaserJet 1018 is rated at up to 12 ppm, which truthfully is pretty slow for a laser printer, but that’s what you get for under $100. It has a 150-sheet paper tray, a print resolution of 1200 dpi, a 234 MHz Processor with 2MB of memory and USB 2.0 connectivity. The LaserJet 1018 uses the HP 12A cartridge.

If you own this printer, you can leave us some feedback. If you are interested in it, you can read a review. If you need LaserJet 1018 toner cartridges, you can visit our site.

Staples has the HP Photosmart 8050 Color Photo Printer on sale for $49.99. The Photosmart 8050 is a 6-ink color printer rated at 21 ppm. It is also a wide format printer that can printer borderless photos up to 8.5 x 24 inches. It has a 1.8″ LCD and buttons to select, size, crop etc. It has the standard connectivity options to print directly from a camera or memory card and it has a resolution of up to 4800 x 1200.

If you need Photosmart 8050 cartridges, you can check out our site.

Best Buy has the HP Officejet 6210 on sale for $120. It is a regular sale so there is no rebate, but it’s one of those prices that’s so low you have to add the item to your cart to see it. Since it’s Best Buy, you can arrange for an in-store pickup to avoid the shipping charges. Unfortunately there is no way around the tax in this case though. This printer is usually around $150-$170, so $120 is a pretty sweet deal.

The Officejet 6210 is a color all-in-one machine that copies, scans, and faxes. It is rated by HP at “up to” 23 ppm for black and 18 ppm color. It has a 4800 x 1200 resolution, which is not the best ever but is still totally acceptable for an all-in-one printer. The scanning resolution is 2400 x 1200 dpi. It has a six-ink color system, an automatic document feeder, a fancy control panel and all the usual connectivity options. This is a real all-in-one machine, not one of the $50 ones you see at Wal Mart, so it is a little more geared towards business use. But at this price, it can definitely work for home users as well.

You can find HP Officejet 6210 ink cartridges on our site.

Buy.com has the Photosmart 8250 on sale for $59 after rebate and $39 if you use Google Checkout. Google is giving merchants big breaks to use Checkout so they are passing that along to customers. Using Checkout is a bit of a pain if you don’t already have a Google email account, but it will just take you a few extra seconds and it’s probably worth the $20. There is no shipping and in most states there won’t be any tax.

The Photosmart 8250 is the still billed by HP as the “world’s fastest photo printer” even though there is probably something out there that is faster. To date, I haven’t heard any other printer company make that claim for one of their models, so I guess HP can keep saying what they want.

HP rates the 8250 at 32 ppm for black and 31 ppm for color. HP claims that it can print a 4 x 6 photo in as little as 14 seconds. The Photosmart 8250 can produce prints up to 8.5 by 24 inches so that probably makes this the least-expensive wide format printer on the market. It has 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.

If you need Photosmart 8250 cartridges, then you can check out our site.

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.

Buy.com has the Photosmart 8250 on sale for $59 after rebate. The list price is $100 and then there’s a $40 rebate. There is no shipping and in most states there won’t be any tax.

HP claims that the Photosmart 8250 is the “world’s fastest photo printer”. Obviously that is a little bit of an exaggeration, but it is pretty fast. HP rates the 8250 at 32 ppm for black and 31 ppm for color. 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? The Photosmart 8250 can produce prints up to 8.5 by 24 inches, which is pretty good for a printer this cheap. It has 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.

If you need Photosmart 8250 cartridges, then you can check out our site.

HP reported today that their profit was up fourfold from a year ago. Their income for this quarter was $1.7 billion and they ended the year with $91.7 billion worth of sales, which meant they surpassed IBM as the world’s biggest technology company in terms of revenue.

The interesting thing about all these giant numbers, as always, is how much of HP’s profits come from their printing and imaging division. That division had an operating profit of $1.1 billion on total sales of $7.3 billion. For comparison, their computer division had a profit of $336 million on sales of $7.8 billion. To be fair, computers sales always involve very low margins, but it is still a stark contrast and their printer division continues to be their most profitable year after year.

HP’s overall ink and toner cartridge sales were up 9% over last year, so they must be doing something right. They didn’t exactly set the world on fire with any of their new models in the last year, so the increase must just be due to the size and availability of their printer line.

H-P profit rises fourfold; sales up 7%, topping views [MarketWatch]