Inkjet Printers

Inkjet printers  are primarily meant for home, home office, or small office work. Color inkjet printers tend to be the most popular models on the market since digital photography and digital imaging is taking the consumer market by storm.

• Photo inkjet printers produce high quality photos and other color images, but aren't as fast as the portable photo printers designed specifically for making 4x6 prints.
• If you only care about printing snapshots straight from your camera without dealing with a computer, check out the photo printers article.
• If you want to print enlarged photos, edit your images, and save your photos to a hard drive, then an inkjet printer will suit you better.
• Print off anything you want from your computer.
• Inexpensive for printing color photos and the like, it tends to be a slow and rather costly choice if all you want to do is print in black and white.
• If you need multiple functions on your printer, such as scanning or copying, you may be better off looking at the Multifunction Printers.
• The resolution is not near the same quality as on inkjets.
• A laser printer might be good too.
• Unfortunately, these models are still in their early stages, which means that they are fast, but not yet ready for printing glossy photos, and they are still quite expensive.

Highly Rated Printers

Here are some inkjet printers that have rated highly by critics at PC Magazine and PC World, respectively.

Canon Pixma MP500 The Canon Pixma MP500  works quickly and delivers high quality prints, in both color and black and white. It has dual paper trays and a built-in duplexer.	Richo Aficio G700 Richo's Aficio G700  is an inkjet that operates as well as many laser printers. It's fast, high quality and can hold a whopping 700 sheets of paper.	HP Deskjet 6980dt The HP Deskjet 6980dt  is loaded with features. The printer has wireless network support, a 400 sheet capacity, and directly links to cameras for photo prints.	Canon Pixma MP830 The Canon Pixmaa MP830  is one of the fatest inkjets out there. It also has fax capabilities, duplex ADF and products high quality prints. It retails at $300.

Features to Look For

• Printers will tell you all about the general specs to take into account before buying.
• Multiple Color Cartridges- A printer that uses more cartridges for different colors is a more cost-effective printer.
• Not all colors are used at the same rate, so replacements are only necessary on the ones you use most.
• Plus, the more individual colors a printer has, the better chance it has of accurately reproducing different shades of grey.
• Memory Card Slots- If you want to bypass the computer and print "directly" from your camera, look for a printer with memory card slots, or compact flash slots, depending on what type of memory media your camera uses.
• LCD Screen- This is another feature that lets you bypass using a computer.
• With an LCD screen (usually folding) you can easily see what you are going to print, and sometimes it allows you to edit directly from the screen through a series of menus or quick buttons.
• USB and Firewire Ports- This is yet another feature that helps bypass using a computer to print directly from your camera. It is also helpful to hook up other products to the printer.
• PictBridge Support- This is a feature that allows you to connect directly from your camera to your printer without using a computer. Make sure your camera has this feature too in order to take advantage of it.
• Borderless Photos- It is surprising to think that this option doesn't come standard on all printers, but it doesn't, so always double check the model to make sure that it has it if you want to make borderless photos.

On Cost & Longterm Consumable Expediture

• Don't be fooled by initial purchase prices. Often two models sitting side by side are not really as inexpensive as they look.
• You have to consider that you will be buying photo paper, standard paper, and ink cartridges.
• The more you use your printer, the more cost-effective it will be.
• It's still not cheap.
• If you spend $100 to buy a printer, you can easily spend double that in a few years just on consumables.

Other Quick Picks

• Canon Pixma iP6000D  (with LCD screen)
• HP Deskjet 3920  (Budget)
• HP Deskjet 8450  (Photo)
• Canon i9900  (Fast 13x19s)

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