HP Photosmart A826(Printer)

DesignThe HP Photosmart A826 is all smooth plastic and rounded edges. Its design is pod-like, resembling the 1950s take on futuristic, space-age design -- it would be right at home in Disney's House of the Future exhibit from the late '50s.

It sits about 264mm wide at the base with a narrower top, about 244mm deep, and about 274mm tall. It weighs about a light 3kg. The printer's top panel flips up for paper loading. Unlike most snapshot printers, the paper is fully contained within the body of the printer. You can load up to 100 sheets of 152 by 102mm or 178 by 127mm paper and close the lid, thereby protecting stored paper from dust.
The control panel on the Photosmart A826 couldn't be simpler -- basically, there isn't one. When you flip down the front cover/paper output tray, you're faced with four memory card slots and a PictBridge USB port, as well as a plastic stylus in its own holder.
All of the functionality is accessed through the 178mm (7-inch) touchscreen display. The large screen makes it a pleasure to peruse images, and the screen is nicely responsive to touch, though we found it prefers the stylus to a finger. Also, the stylus doesn't leave unsightly fingerprints.
A small panel on the printer's front hides the single print cartridge. Replacing the print cartridge alone costs about £10, and HP estimates that it will print about 55 152 by 102mm photos.
FeaturesThe Photosmart A826 is geared toward standalone, PC-free use, so most of its features are packed right into the touchscreen. While you can set up the A826 to print from a PC, the four memory card slots and PictBridge port make it easy to print from a memory card or PictBridge device like a camera or camera phone. For wireless printing, HP offers an optional USB Bluetooth adapter.
Setup is simple: Plug in the power, select your language and location and then the printer prompts you to insert a card. When you do, the printer calls up the files in a nine-image thumbnail view. To select a photo for printing and/or editing, simply touch the check box. To zoom in on a single image, touch the centre of the thumbnail. At this point, you can select all of the images or step through them in groups of nine or one by one

source: reviews.cnet.co.uk

HP Photosmart C8180 (printer)

DesignThe design of the C8180 is similar to the rest of the printers in the Photosmart series, but this particular model has a few notable hardware additions that you won't find in most all-in-ones. Unlike most printers, the C8180 has a swiveled touchscreen that lets you control all the software functions including photo editing, wireless setup and management, and scanning jobs.
The touchscreen eliminates button clutter and frees up the rest of the front panel for simple buttons that control one-touch red-eye removal as well as a few others for start, stop and cancel. The front of the C8180 also has a memory card bay with slots for Compact Flash, xD, SD/MMC and Memory Stick cards.
FeaturesAlthough HP flaunts the C8180 as a full-featured AIO for the home and office, it lacks a fax machine and an auto-document feeder that you can find on other AIOs for less money. You'll also notice a unique hardware feature on the front of the C8180: a LightScribe drive that lets you archive your data directly from a USB key or an external memory card to a CD/DVD.
We're not disputing its utility, but we wish HP could've found a way to include the drive alongside an ADF and fax instead of omitting them entirely. In either case, we must compliment HP on the build quality and design of the C8180. The rounded corners and silver/white overlay contribute to its overall appeal; this printer will look great alongside any desk setup.
You have three options for connecting your computer to the printer: wired via the included USB cable, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. We can confidently state that the Photosmart C8180 is the easiest Wi-Fi printer we've used to date. Other printers make you pour through pages and pages of instructions and ultimately force you to set up the connection via an ad-hoc network, but the C8180 distills the process down to a simple pairing between the printer and your computer.
In fact, there are no onscreen instructions; you set everything up through the digital LCD on the faceplate itself. From open box to first print, the entire Wi-Fi setup took less than five minutes.
Another unique feature to the C8180 is its dual paper input tray. This is bound to be one of those "Why didn't we think of that?" headaches for HP's competitors, and it really is genius. The C8180 has two separate paper trays: one for larger A4 paper and another for smaller A6 media. This small hardware addition saves time and desk space by allowing the user to manually select which paper tray will spool from the device, but most of the time the C8180 will choose automatically depending on the job

source: rewies.cnet.co

OKI C3600n

A color laser printer can be the perfect solution for small workgroups and home offices that print a high volume of color documents. The OKI C3600n ($399) color laser printer is network ready and prints at an impressive speed compared with its competition, but it's larger than most printers and lacks fancy extras such as a full-color LCD screen or a wireless print server. If you weigh performance benchmarks scores and output quality over features, size, and cost, this color laser printer is sufficient for most business uses.
Design and featuresWe're not very impressed with the OKI C3600n's design, but we've never been too wowed by laser printers in general. It seems that at the business level, manufacturers spend more time on efficiency rather than aesthetic innovation, and this printer certainly adheres to that model. The matte white C3600n measures 11.4 inches tall by 14.7 inches wide by 18.8 inches deep and weighs approximately 46 pounds, according to OKI. We wouldn't call it a behemoth, but it's larger than the Samsung CLP-315W that is only 9.6 inches tall by 15.3 inches wide by 12.3 inches deep. The OKI also weighs more than 20 pounds more than the Samsung, so people with limited desk space will probably be happier with a more compact machine.
You'll find all the ports you need to connect the printer to your computer (including the power plug) on the back of the chassis, including a USB and an Ethernet port for networking across multiple systems. One useful feature absent on the OKI C3600n is a front-mount USB port for connecting PictBridge-compatible cameras or direct printing from a USB flash storage drive--you can find such a port on the aforementioned Brother HL-4040CN.
Since it's only a single function laser printer, there aren't many extra features to discuss, but we commend OKI for including a 400MHz processor and a hefty 128MB of memory that lets it handle bigger print jobs than the competition. You can even upgrade to a maximum 640MB of memory. Comparatively, the Dell 1320c, released two years ago, shipped with a 333MHz processor and just 64MB of nonexpandable memory.
The C3600n's CMYK toner cartridges are individually separated and sit directly underneath the top cover, lined up in a horizontal row. The printer ships with "standard" capacity cartridges--according to OKI, the black cartridge lasts for 1,500 pages and each of the three-color cartridges will last for 1,000 prints. Using the prices on OKI's Web site, the cost to replace them is $51 and $60, respectively, but OKI also offers high capacity toner that can print 2,500 black pages for $73 and 2,000 color pages for $105. Using the high capacity toner for best value, you can expect to spend about 2.9 cents for a black-only page and 5.3 cents per color page, a fair price by today's printing costs.. Finally, the recommended monthly duty cycle for this printer is 35,000 pages, which is more than adequate for small businesses and workgroups.
PerformanceThe OKI C3600n fared well in a direct output speed comparison with three other color laser printers. It placed second best in all of our tests just behind the Brother HL-4040CN, a similarly priced single-function laser. As a matter of fact, it printed black text at almost the exact same speed, scoring 15.61 pages per minute compared with the Brother's 15.66. It couldn't keep up with the Samsung CLP-310W in the color presentation test, but it's safe to say that you won't be waiting too long for any document using this printer.

SOURCE: reviews.cnet.com

Lexmark X7675 All-In-One Printer

Overall Evaluation: If you are looking for a multi-function all-in-one, this is the one. I have been an HP customer for the last twelve years. My last HP all-in-one gave me nothing but problems and that included the software/interface. I always heard good things about Lexmark, so I gave it a try. This Lexmark was easy to configure out of the box, and the process took about 5 minutes. It has all your multi-functions and that includes a nice Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) tray for multiple copies/scans. It has two interfaces, one you have to install within each computer (using the CD), and another interface is a screen within the printer itself; which is pretty easy to use and read. All of my computers within my network (802.11g) now have the ability to print with no problems. The WIFI capability is awesome, and this eliminates the need to share the printer via a computer and depend on that computer. This printer is very professional and provides an outstanding capability for any home. Perhaps could be considered among business printers. Not bad for a $119 purchase.

Lenovo IdeaCentre K220

The Lenovo IdeaCentre K220 desktop ($699 list; $998 with 21.5-inch widescreen monitor) succeeds the K210 desktop with a whole lot more power for not very much more money. Considering that the upgrade costs $250, the K220 represents a terrific value for the consumer. It's an improvement over its predecessor across the board, more specifically, with its doubling of memory, hard drive size, and the number of CPU cores. This system is one of the first that I've seen to succeed in satisfying the needs of both the technically inclined power user and the accountant in your family. It's time to replace that old $2,000 PC you bought in 2005 with a system that costs much, much less.


Source : http://www.pcmag.com