Zebra Printers – Are They Right for You?

You’ve probably come across Zebra printers and wondered what and who they are for and if they fit your needs. Zebra is best known for their specialty label printing solutions and reliable bar code printing solutions and mainly serves the business and government markets. They have over 30 years experience and are a trusted brand for 90% of Fortune 500 companies.

Some of the most popular thermal label printers are the TLP 2844-Z desktop thermal laser printer, TLP 2844, LP 2844, ZM600, S600 and the LP 2824 direct thermal printer. Some of the most popular card printers are the P110i card printer, P330i, P640i and the P320i card printer.

Zebra printers typically get rave reviews and are very durable and reliable; a great investment for your company. Other than their most well-known products, their thermal printers, they also have a boat-load of other great products including software, networking products, and even enterprise solutions.

Zebra Resource:
Download a driver for your Zebra printer.

HP Photosmart A636 Printer Review

I’ve seen some rave reviews on the HP Photosmart A636 compact photo printer, and I do like HP printers, so I had to get my hands on one to see what all the fuss was really about. Is it as good as they claim, you ask? Here’s my take:

The HP Photosmart A636 has a great, compact printer body, weighing only 3.4 lbs., a built in handle for easy portability, and prints at a relatively decent speed. But what makes this printer so fabulous is its 4.8” touch screen that offers great convenience features. Directly on the touch pad you can edit photos. It gives you the ability to crop, adjust brightness, add a frame, draw on the image and even create greeting cards (which I personally love to do for the Holidays). It also has this “pet eye” feature which in addition to fixing red eyes on humans will find green, white and yellow eyes pets often have in pictures and fix them as well. The printer also has the ability to not only print 4×6” photos, which most standard photo printers are able to do, it also can print 5×7” photos at a touch of a button.

The other fantastic feature is the A636’s effortless driver installation – a truly innovative feature. You can actually install the driver directly from the printer by connecting it by USB and that’s it! To print from a USB flash drive, memory card or PictBridge camera, all you have to do is plug in the power cord, snap in the one cartridge and load paper; it’s as simple as that.

So, the short answer to the question is yes – The HP Photosmart A636 is a great compact photo printer. I would definitely recommend it.

New iPhone 3.0 Software

Courtesy of Apple Inc.

Yesterday, March 17th, Apple presented an extremely detailed preview of the next operating system for the iPhone. iPhone’s OS 3.0 is in beta phase and has been given to the iPhone Developer Program to access and test the software.

iPhone OS 3.0 is supposedly equipped with over a hundred new features (most importantly the copy and paste feature which the phone frustratingly lacked before). Here are a few:

• Search your iPhone
• Cut, copy, and paste
• Send photos, contacts, audio files, and location via MMS (only available on iPhone 3G)
• Read and compose email and text messages in landscape

Technologizer.com has tried to list out the 100 new iPhone 3.0 features they could remember, but couldn’t seem to figure out all 100 (my guess is because the features are so minuscule in the grand scheme of things and Apple was just trying to hit the number 100). Apple also has a weak update on their sparse iPhone 3.0 info page.

All and all an update much needed. Although I would also guess that they have had these fixes for quite some time now and just wanted to wait to accumulate more apple buyers before launching it. I say this because they are going to charge an upgrade fee for all the non 3G iPhones.

Save Money on Ink and Toner Cartridges

Don’t you hate the fact that printer Manufacturers seem to rip us off with consumables such as ink and toner? It seems like they practically give away certain printers only to charge ridiculous prices on the ink and toner cartridges. Well don’t be discouraged; I have a few ways to save money on toner before and after you have purchased a printer.

After: If you already have a printer, there are a couple ways to save money on toner cartridges. First, if you see the “low toner” light on do not immediately replace the cartridge. Most often when that light goes off, the printer actually has enough ink to print several more pages – maybe even 50 or more. Just wait until the quality is actually reduced and then replace the cartridge. If you’re a home user and don’t really care about the print quality then wait until you can’t read the text anymore and replace the cartridge.

Also, as ridiculous as it sounds, shaking the toner cartridge itself actually lengthens the life of the cartridge. By taking the toner cartridge out and shaking it, you are actually waking up your cartridge for a few more print cycles. Lately, I’ve seen a few TV commercials poking fun at this practice, but they’re mentioning it because it actually works!

Before: If you are about to purchase a printer and want to save money on ink and toner take note of the tips to follow. Some printers come with the toner and drum unit as one and others they are separate. Because you usually end up replacing toner more than the drum, it will be more expensive if they are combined, so buy one that is separate. Always buy printers that have separated toners so you can replace them individually, otherwise you will be throwing your money away.

Another way to save money is to pay attention to the yield of the toner cartridge. The yield helps determine how many pages you can print before running out of ink or toner so it is important to understand what the yield number means. Yield is expressed as a number of pages printed at a certain amount of text coverage per page (i.e. 5000 pages at 5% coverage). The more pages the cartridge can print, the better. When buying a printer remember: the lower the cost of toner cartridges, the lower the total cost of ownership for the printer.

How does a Laser Printer Work?

Courtesy of IBM Inc.

There are many different types of printers out there on the market, all with a different method to printing. Most people can guess how an inkjet printer prints due to the name it’s given, but do you know how a laser printer prints? How does a laser beam print text and images on a sheet of paper? It’s actually quiet interesting (at least I think so) and is based off some simple scientific principles – definitely worth taking a look.

Find out how a laser printer works and the history of a laser printer. The first laser printer can be credited to IBM. IBM built the first commercial implementation of a laser printer with the IBM model 3800 in 1975.

Dot Matrix Printers

Courtesy of Super Warehouse

While I thought these were gone long with the dinosaurs, dot matrix printers are still being built and purchased today. This is mainly due to the economy and the fact these printers are relatively cheap to buy, cheap to maintain and very durable, but also due to their unique features.

What is a dot matrix printer you might ask? A dot matrix printer is a type of printer that produces characters, or text, and illustrations by means of striking pins against an ink-soaked cloth ribbon on paper to print closely spaced dots in the appropriate shape (much like a typewriter). They do not produce high-quality output to say the least, but they do have the ability to print multi-page forms (carbon copies) and they can print relatively quickly.

A dot matrix printer’s speed is measured by characters per second (cps). The speed can vary between about 50 to well-over 500 cps. While I said before the quality is below-par, the quality actually is determined by the number of pins the printer has, because the pins are the mechanisms that print the dots. These printers can have between 9 and 24 pins; 24 pins being the best. 24 pin dot matrix printers can print near letter-quality type, but they do make a lot of noise when printing.

Popular dot matrix printer brands are Epson printers, Okidata printers, Panasonic printers, and Tally printers. While dot matrix printers may not be the “sexiest” printers on the market or have the best quality print out there, they are the workhorses of the printing world and are ideal for organizations that do a lot of invoicing each day. Dot matrix printers have touch, reliable performance and one of the lowest costs per page due to their ability to use paper rolls rather than expensive individual sheets.

Kindle 2

Courtesy of CNET

Amazon introduces the next-generation wireless reading device – Kindle 2. Like many, you may have not even caught the first edition, but it is something to take notice of now as it’s the beginning of a gadget trend. Kindle operates on its own, without a PC, and has the ability to get books wirelessly in less than 60 seconds and can display them in a nice, sleek, slim design. It’s basically the world’s biggest, portable e-Book store with over 240,000 books. It retrieves thousands of books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs via Amazon’s familiar online store.

The second version of Kindle comes with additional storage, longer battery life and an improved display. The most interesting new feature is Kindle’s ability to read to you (text-to-speech feature); making Amazon’s revolutionary device even better. The built-in keyboard is useful for notes and navigation, and the font size is adjustable. It displays MP3 and AAC audio, and is compatible with Windows and Mac machines.

While all of this sounds very fascinating, and it is, the one major downside is the price. At a whopping $359.00, Kindle two’s price tag is just too high. I do believe it is the best e-book reader out there and the best value, but is it really something consumers will be able to justify spending that kind of money on?

Samsung CLP-315

Courtesy Samsung Inc.

If you are interested in a color laser printer, but aren’t sure if you can afford one (seeing how color laser printers usually carry a price tag of between xxx and $xxx), don’t worry I have the printer for you. I recently had a date with the popular Samsung CLP-315 Color Laser Printer because I wanted to see what all the commotion was about. Samsung proudly claims that the CLP-315 is one of the world’s smallest color lasers and I must agree. At only 9.6 inches tall by 15.3 inches wide by 12.3 inches deep, it is the smallest color laser printer I’ve ever had my hands on. Usually I find color laser printers to take up most of a desk and tower above you. These massive color laser printers are typically designed for the corporate environment. However, this little color laser printer is designed as a personal printer, and fits easily on a desktop without dominating it.

In order to keep the cost so low, Samsung has had to cut a few corners. The printer does not come with Wi-Fi, which is important if you want to network your printer. But, seeing how this is meant to be a personal color laser printer, then connecting the printer with a USB cord should be quiet alright. Samsung also had designed the printer with only a 150 sheet paper capacity and a slower color printing speed due to the four-pass printing. This means that for color prints the paper needs four passes – each one pass for each toner color. This results in a speedy 17 pages per minute for monochrome and only a 4 pages per minute for color. Setting up is really easy, however, seeing how it comes shipped with the toner cartridges already placed inside the printer. I did a price analysis, and the clp-315 toner is pretty decent – Shop around and you’ll find it for a great price.

The bottom line, however, is the Samsung CLP-315 color laser printer offers a lot for a small price tag (as with most samsung printers). For home users that are watching their money in this horrible economy, you’ll get a great compact printer that prints text and graphics better than inkjets, and graphic outputs better than most color lasers with vibrant colors and smooth fills. Text quality isn’t as crisp as other lasers, but this is okay for most home users. You do trade in speed, paper capacity, and Wi-Fi for the money, but your average home user will realistically be fine with this trade-in. In the end, it’s a great deal and would probably be worth more money.

Cat vs Printer

I thought I’d lighten up this Wednesday hump-day to get us through the week. It’s a YouTube video I find hilarious. Enjoy!

Cat vs Printer YouTube Video

Lexmark X7675 Pro Review

Courtesy of Lexmark Inc

Recently I had the pleasure of playing around with a close friend’s new printer and I wanted to give you the full review. The Lexmark X7675 Pro Multifunction Inkjet Printer has its pluses and minuses, but overall, the printer is a great option compared to several other multifunction inkjet printers.

The pluses: This printer comes with extensive network connectivity as standard, including Ethernet and Wi-Fi support. I found that the Wi-Fi setup time and process was extremely easy compared to most. The onscreen guide helped me setup and print a page in only about five minutes! The Lexmark printer also has a duplexer for printing on both sides, auto document feeder, and is compatible with high yield cartridges. Additional bonuses include intuitive control panels that make the most common device settings easy to adjust, OCR scanning software, and an outstanding and generous five-year warranty program for great peace-of-mind.

The minuses: I’ll be honest; the printer is not as fast as it claims. I was definitely pacing, waiting for the sheets to spit out, but the quality was decent. The other negative is it can only hold up to 100 sheets of paper, while other competitors can hold up to 250 sheets of paper. I would have liked it better if it could hold more paper and if it came with some advanced paper handing options.

All in all, the Lexmark X7675 Pro gives office professionals and advanced home users an easy-to-use tool to print clear media, fax documents, and scan text and photos. The device holds-up to its promises to streamline initial setup processes and establish a Wi-Fi connection quickly and pain-free. This printer comes with some great additional features. I would suggest, however, that if you are a home user looking for a cheap plug-and-print printer, that this may not be the one for you, but it is excellent for more advanced users. Therefore, this printer gets a solid recommendation from me like several other lexmark printers from different printer categories.