If you’re going to give up desk-space to a printer then it may as well earn its keep by being bloody gorgeous. I’d wager that’s the design brief given to Samsung’s computer peripherals team; how else could you explain the glossy, piano lacquer pair of laser printers, the monochrome ML-1630 and the multifunction SCX-4500.
Everyone knows that cigarettes are bad for you, and the second-hand smoke is also quite dangerous to your health. But what if I told you that your innocent-looking printer in your office was just as dangerous?
According to a recent study performed by the Queensland University of Technology has shown that the average laser printer can emit harmful clouds of ultra-fine particles. The areas around the printers were found to have a concentration of particles that were “five times higher than outdoor levels often produced by traffic.”
Dymo’s desktop mailing solution is a two piece kit with a twin turbo labelmaker and 5lb scale. Both are compact and the label maker has a nice modern design that looks good sitting next to my computer. Tres cute! But most importantly the thing works.
If you ask me, it’s a good job the palms of people’s hands are generally so compact, otherwise what would manufacturers describe their tiny products as fitting into? “Fits into your small-intestine” just doesn’t have the same ‘buy me!’ ring to it. Anyway, Canon is latest to roll out that old chestnut, claiming their Selphy CP740 photo printer is, yes, small enough to fit in your hand. It’ll spit out a fresh 4×6 in 58 seconds.
If you lock a printer, a WiFi dongle and a digital photo frame in a bedroom with an two-gallon tub of industrial lubricant and refuse to let them leave until they’ve produced some sort of offspring, you might just end up with this Wall-Mountable Wireless Printer. Designed by ransmeier & floyd, it produces prints and then drops them down into a viewing window.
Before the days of the internet, people watching cookery programmes on TV would have to develop very speedy writing hands in order to copy down a recipe from the screen before it disappeared. It was the difference between a delicious roasted duck breast with plum coulis and an unpleasant, flat cake that tastes like dung. What they really could have done with is some way to take a screenshot, printing it out for later and leaving them free to concentrate on hoping the chef scalds himself. Well, several years too late, Haier are planning to release a TV that, among HDMI and USB, has a “printer port”.
If you love to print out your own 4×6 pictures from your digital camera, Canon has updated their SELPHY line of 4×6 printers that might be worth checking out.
We all know that manufacturers make a ton of money off of ink cartridges. We know this because we fork over a lot of money for a piece of plastic, a chip and a few drops of ink. So naturally, as consumers we try to find the cheapest possible prices on said cartridges. For some, they find it cheaper to purchase their ink from manufacturers overseas. Don’t expect to continue doing that for long.
Scroll your memory truffles back ten years, flick open a catalogue of printers and tell me the cheapest monochrome laser you can find. Bowel-shattering, isn’t it. And yet for the past few weeks in my lounge-cum-banquette-seating-area I’ve had a networked laser printer that you can pick up for less than $100 online (or under £80 in the UK); it’s the E120n and it’s made by the lovelies at Lexmark.
One of the worst things in life has to be waiting. And for all of our great technology these days, we’re still constantly waiting. Whether it’s downloading Windows updates, or printing off a family portrait, there’s always plenty of time to kill. Australian-based Silverbrook Research my have something to cut down on the time you spend waiting on those prints.
video after the jump Continued »
SlashGear Japan
