The $100 Lexmark Impact S305 is a budget-friendly inkjet all-in-one that prints, scans and copies. You also get Wi-Fi for tangle-free sharing in a small workgroup, as well as PC-free photo printing via memory card and PictBridge. It lacks the big color LCD and PC-free web connectivity of some of its bigger siblings, but the web experts have spoken, and they seem to appreciate the value that the Impact S305 brings to the table.

Justin Yu of CNET gives the Impact S305 an impressive 4 stars out of 5. According to the review, the printer “laid down total domination in the race for print speed” and print quality for text and photos was very good. Yu also likes the easy Wi-Fi setup, memory card and PictBridge connectivity, and the useful software and programs that come with the printer. Overall, the review concludes that the Impact S305 packs plenty of punch for the price.

TechreviewSource.com also gives the Impact S305 4 stars out of 5. Just like Yu, the review appreciates the fast print speed, high quality output, and Wi-Fi. Memory card connectivity is another benefit, especially considering the affordable MSRP. The small LCD is hard to read at times, and the lack of an auto-duplexer or ADF reminds you that this is a printer intended for more budget-minded home and small office users.

Finally, Jonathan Rougeot of ComputerShopper.com gives the Impact S305 a solid 7.4 out of 10. Like the previous two reviews, he likes the high print quality and fast print speeds, although copy and scan speeds are a little less impressive. Rougeot agrees that the lack of an ADF or auto-duplexer limits the appeal outside of the home office market, but if you’re not asking for too much, the Impact S305 will give you more than enough of what you need.

Printers that are capable of making 3D objects have been around for awhile, albeit at prices that your average consumer can’t afford. But apparently HP has seen the future, and now they’ll be the first big-name printer maker to release their own 3D printer later this year. Actually, the company will be lending its name to a machine manufactured by Stratasys, which makes the uPrint 3D printer that Jay Leno uses. No word on pricing for the HP printer, but the uPrint goes for $15,000.

What’s interesting to me is that HP isn’t actually manufacturing the printers. It’s not a bad arrangement when you think about it – Stratasys is a relatively unknown company that can benefit from the “sales and distribution” expertise and resources of a big brand name, and HP can save its R&D dollars while getting a feel for the 3D printing market. Whether or not the new printer is an improvement on previous models in terms of price and functionality, the fact that HP is getting in on the 3D printing revolution proves that this is an emerging field worth watching in the years to come.

(Story via CNET; Photo via Morguefile)

There’s an interesting article in the LA Times about how consumer advocates and regulators are pushing for stricter reporting of how much ink is in a cartridge. The main issue seems to be that people don’t trust the page yields often reported in place of ink weight or volume. Page yield testing can be done in all kinds of ways with all kinds of output that use different amounts of ink, and printer companies aren’t exactly an open book on where their numbers come from. The growing outrage is understandable, considering how printer ink costs can really add up over the long-term. As we’ve mentioned before, ink companies are aware of this, and they’ve taken steps to make testing standards and reporting of page yields as uniform as possible. But it doesn’t seem to be enough for the critics, and many of them are gathering at the annual meeting of the National Conference On Weights and Measures in Nashville (January 23-27) to put pressure on the printing industry for better information on cartridge yields.

Personally, I agree that cartridge yield reporting could use some improvement, although I’ve seen volume reported in milliliters for OEM cartridges and compatible cartridges. The real issue for me is that everyone prints different kinds of output, but it seems that no one has an easy way to keep track of how much ink and paper they’ve used. So I have an idea – why not invent a device that measures weight and volume of ink used, as well as number of pages printed, for single print jobs and over extended periods. You could attach it to your printer, and it could give you a personal and customized snapshot of how much you print and how fast you go through your cartridges. As a result, you can make more informed decisions when you shop for printer consumables. Maybe there are engineering issues I don’t know about, or maybe the technology already exists, but it seems like a reasonable solution for people and businesses that print a consistent amount of output over extended periods.

Until consumers feel more comfortable about the information they get from printer companies, they may want to stock up on compatible cartridges for a fuss-free way to save money. Cartridge makers certainly know that their customers want complete information on how much ink is in every cartridge. The big question is whether or not the industry will give the public what they want, when they want it.

(Photo via Morguefile)

Following in the recent footsteps of HP and Gwen Stefani, pop superstar Lady Gaga has signed a multi-year deal to become a “creative director” for a new line of Polaroid imaging products. In the official press release, Gaga says she is “proud to announce [her] new partnership with Polaroid as the creative director and inventor of specialty projects,” and is “excited to extend [her]self behind the scenes as a designer.” According to a story in the New York Post, Polaroid VP Jon Pollock says Gaga will be “coming in a couple times a month at a minimum.”

The new face of Polaroid made an appearance at CES 2010, along with a few new products scheduled for release later on this year. Besides the PIC 1000, which is a redesign of the classic instant camera, Polaroid introduced two new printers that don’t use ink: the 3”x4” Instant Digital Camera with built-in Printer, and 3”x4” Instant Mobile Printer (if you already have a camera). Both products can print 3”x4” photos by heating the color crystals already embedded in the special ZINK paper. Not as big as the 4”x6” prints that the Pandigital ZINK Printer can roll out, but definitely an improvement over the 2”x3” photos produced by the currently available Polaroid PoGo Camera with Printer and PoGo Photo Printer.

Personally, I’m skeptical about Lady Gaga’s potential impact on the success of the new product line. We’ve talked about name dropping and endorsements in the past, and I still believe that the face of your campaign has to have at least something in common with the product. Michael Jordan endorsing basketball shoes makes sense to me because if a tool of the trade is endorsed by a master of the trade, a customer can make the connection and assume it’s worth buying. In this case, a pop singer with distinctive fashion sense endorsing a lineup of cameras and other related products seems like a bit of a stretch, although she’s apparently been a Polaroid fan and user for awhile now. But even if consumers can make the connection, considering the rapid turnover on the pop music charts these days, can we even assume Lady Gaga will have the same appeal when these products come out later on in the year? Perhaps the toughest job in marketing is turning a product that consumers don’t need into something they just have to have. To that end, it’ll be interesting to see if the marriage between Lady Gaga and Polaroid is a match made in heaven, or a bad romance.

(Story via PrinterComparison.com)

Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned. Bren Instruments (Bren), a maker of stencil machines and sign & decal printing systems, is learning that lesson the hard way via the court system. Its ongoing legal struggle stems from a 2008 lawsuit brought by former customer and Bellagio water fountain designer Wet Enterprises (Wet) against Bren for allegedly misrepresenting the capabilities of an $18,000 print cutter. In Wet’s suit, they claimed that their Bren print cutter couldn’t print UL safety labels fast enough to stick onto time-sensitive shipments of “outdoor and underwater components.” As a result, Wet said they had to ship items out to clients minus the labels, and then hire workers to go to different clients’ sites around the world and put the labels on there. Bren argued that the machine in question had been tested and that it worked properly, but that Wet employees simply couldn’t learn how to use it, despite training from Bren. Wet eventually dropped the suit, and Bren is now countersuing Wet to recover legal fees from the original suit, as well as damages from loss of reputation, lost opportunities for business expansion, and punitive damages for “actual malice.” In total, Bren is seeking just over $1.5 million.

The interesting part of Bren’s countersuit is an alleged statement from Wet owner Mark Fuller that would suggest a malicious intent behind Wet’s original suit against Bren. More specifically, Bren says that at a trade show, Fuller indicated that Wet would drop its suit once Bren had spent more on legal fees than Wet had spent for the print cutter. Wet dropped the suit soon after accomplishing the alleged objective, according to Bren. Bren’s countersuit is ongoing, and Wet’s lawyers recently filed a motion to move it to the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.

However the suit turns out, the legal mess should serve as a warning to printer manufacturers walking that thin line between informational and marketing-oriented copy in print and on the web. Kodak learned its lesson to a certain extent after the fuss raised over its ink ads, although that didn’t really involve any money. You also see more printer makers aiming to maintain credibility in their spec sheets as they adopt uniform print speed and cartridge yield reporting standards. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not familiar with how businesses negotiate product and service agreements with printer makers. But in this case, I would think Bren could’ve had the customer sign a waiver saying the product was satisfactory, or at least get the Bren engineering, legal and marketing departments together to craft copy and disclaimers that would be more lawsuit proof. Either way, the story reminds us that sellers need to watch what they say, and buyers need to watch what they believe.

(Story via Nashville Business Journal; Learn more about Bren print cutters)