M. David Stone of PC Magazine gives the HP Photosmart A636 Inkjet Photo Printer an Editors’ Choice Award winning 4.5/5 for making photo printing as easy and convenient as it’s ever been. He finds the touchscreen icons and menus very easy to use and navigate, and driver installation is quick and painless. While Stone doesn’t see much of an improvement in print speed from the A626, he does appreciate the ability to print in sizes other than 4”x6”. In addition, he notes the marked improvement in photo quality, which in his opinion is much more important than speed when it comes to photo printers.

Melissa Riofrio of PC World gives the HP Photosmart A636 Inkjet Photo Printer an impressive 84/100 for its ease-of-use and ability to print on different media sizes. She finds print speed relatively fast, although she notes that you’ll need to buy your own USB cable to connect directly to your computer. Riofrio also likes the built-in photo editing and enhancement features such as captions, color adjustment and frames, just to name a few. In the end, she even admits developing an emotional attachment to the HP Photosmart A636 Inkjet Photo Printer, noting that “this versatile photo printer made its mark on me: I actually missed it after testing it.”

Finally, Justin Yu of CNET gives the HP Photosmart A636 Inkjet Photo Printer an excellent 4 stars out of 5 for its improved photo quality over the A626, its versatility, and its ease of use. As the other reviews have already mentioned, connecting to your computer is quick and easy - the printer comes with the software and necessary drivers already loaded, so there’s no need to pop a CD into your PC. Like Stone and Riofrio, Yu finds the touchscreen and editing features relatively simple and intuitive. Overall, he considers the HP Photosmart A636 Inkjet Photo Printer an “excellent at-home photo inkjet printer that’s both versatile and easy to use.”

Melissa Riofrio of PC World gives the Canon PIXMA iP2600 Inkjet Photo Printer a strong 81/100 for its “(i)mpressive text and photo quality.” However, $50 printers often come with a trade-off, and the Canon PIXMA iP2600 Inkjet Photo Printer’s main flaw comes in its relatively slow print speed. That said, Riofrio concludes that the low price and solid output quality make this printer worth the limitations if you’re printing from home.

Justin Yu of CNET gives the Canon PIXMA iP2600 Inkjet Photo Printer a solid 7/10 for its compact design and high output quality, noting that print speed is on par with other low-priced printers like the HP Deskjet D4260 and Lexmark Z845. Yu laments the lack of PC-free photo printing options and the fact that the USB cable isn’t included, meaning you may have to spend a little extra in addition to the MSRP. But overall, the review recommends the Canon PIXMA iP2600 Inkjet Photo Printer as a “cost-effective printer for text documents and amateur-level photo printing.”

Finally, Josh Norem of Computer Shopper Magazine gives the Canon PIXMA iP2600 Inkjet Photo Printer an Editors’ Choice Award-winning 8.5/10 for its user-friendliness and quality color output at a low price. Just like Yu and Riofrio, Norem notes that if you’re not insisting on state-of-the-art multi-functionality, this compact photo printer does its job and does it well. He does add that there’s only a 90 day warranty, although I’d say that the low MSRP makes up for it. Despite that, Norem echoes the consensus on the Canon PIXMA iP2600 Inkjet Photo Printer when he concludes that “(i)t’s designed specifically for printing text and photos, and is an overall excellent printer for both of these tasks.”

I. Should You Buy a Printer?

So we’ve covered buying a printer for college and for high school. Now we come to probably the earliest educational level where you should consider buying a printer, at least in my opinion: middle school. The reason is that middle school is typically where you start writing longer papers and putting together reports that combine text and color graphics.

Of course, just like in the decision to buy a printer for high school, you have to consider the alternatives to buying your printer for middle school. First off, you may have a printer at home that you can share with your family, although you’ll have to contend with siblings and parents at times. You also have the printer at the school or local public library, although they probably cost money to use and aren’t available to you before the buildings open or after they close.

If you need to save money in the short term, I think you can get by without your own printer in middle school and stick with outside resources, especially because the fact you aren’t printing a whole lot anyway probably outweighs any issues of convenience you face in college and high school. That said, I can come up with two main scenarios where you buy a new printer for a middle school student to use. First, you don’t have to buy a personal printer for the student. If you don’t already have a family printer, you can take care of everyone’s needs with an affordable MFP that prints, scans, copies and faxes, which pretty much covers the entire spectrum of administrative and household tasks for parents and children.

In the alternative, if you decide to buy a separate printer for a middle school student, think of it as an investment in the future. If you pick the right printer for the student’s current and future needs, you won’t need to go printer shopping for a long time. Technology moves fast, but not so fast that you can’t continue to use a printer for nearly a decade, especially if you have relatively modest needs. Case in point - I bought my Canon S750 Inkjet Printer back in 2002 when I went off to college and I’m still using it today. Not all purchases can fit your needs for such a long time like mine luckily did, but it certainly illustrates the potential benefits of doing your research and knowing what you want.

II. What Should You Buy?

So if you decide to take the plunge and buy a printer, which products can give you the best return on your investment? First off, my recommendations for high school and college printers make sense for middle schoolers too because they’re affordable and functional. But as I mentioned earlier, parents of middle schoolers may also want to consider spending a little more and getting MFPs that offer a fax function on top of the typical print, scan and copy functions you find in many All-in-Ones. This way the whole family can take care of all their paper processing needs in one space-saving machine. Here’s an initial list of printers and MFPs from which to begin your search:

HP Officejet J3680 Inkjet All-in-One Printer: Scans, copies, faxes, prints at 14 pages per minute in color and 20 in black and white, features built-in phone, and weighs under 9 lbs. (MSRP: $89.99)

HP Officejet Pro L7590 All-in-One Inkjet Printer: Scans, copies, faxes and prints at 34 pages per minute in color and 35 in black and white, PC-free photo printing via PictBridge and memory card, high yield ink cartridges help keep cost per page as low as possible (MSRP: $299.99)

Canon PIXMA MX850 Inkjet MFP:Scans, faxes, copies and prints at 24 pages per minute in color and 31 in black and white, Ethernet network connectivity, PC-free photo printing, and 2.5” TFT screen to preview and edit photos (MSRP: $279.99)

Ricoh GelSprinter GX2500 Printer: Viscous ink for sharper output, prints at 28 pages per minute in color and black and white (MSRP: $169)

Dell 968 All-in-One Inkjet Printer: Scans, faxes, copies and prints at 27 pages per minute in color and 32 in black and white, Ethernet network connectivity, and Wi-Fi model also available (MSRP: $179, $259 for wireless version)

And with that, we conclude our series on printers for back to school. These posts are designed to get you thinking about what you need, but what you buy will come down to your own research and assessment of your budget. For a more comprehensive list of printers, visit our Printer Previews and Reviews section or browse the LD Products website. Good luck with the shopping process and have a great school year.

(Photo via Morguefile)

When you print in college, your decision really comes down to cost and convenience. High school is different because you’re more likely to print from home. And if you do live at home, that leaves you three choices - buy your own printer, use the family printer, or make some time in the day to get to the printer in the local library or at school before closing time.

On one hand, buying a new printer costs money, both for the printer itself and for the ink or toner. On the other hand, sharing a printer with your family may lead to delays, especially if you have siblings or the printer resides in a parent’s home office. You run into similar issues if you resort to the school or public library, and you only have a limited time to use the machines there. Plus, you probably have to pay for every page. Compare the cost of buying and maintaining a printer with any inconvenience caused by sharing the family printer or the cost and time constraints involved in using the one at the school or local library, and see what makes sense under the circumstances.

Personally, I think it makes even more sense to buy your own printer in high school than it does in college, unless you go to a school with a well-equipped computer lab that you can access almost anytime you want. Boarding school students may want to check in with their school and ask about available printing facilities and costs, then go through a similar analysis to what we outlined in our post on printing in college.

II. What Should You Buy?

As a high school student, you’re writing and printing more pages of text than you did in middle school, but fewer than you will in college. As a result, you can afford to go with the lower average MSRP of an inkjet printer and higher cost per page for ink cartridges. With a couple of carryovers from our post on college printing, check out these affordable, well-rounded inkjet printers that can handle both color presentations and term papers:

Lexmark X3650 All-in-One Inkjet Printer: PC-free photo printing, 25 page per minute print speed in black and white, handles banner-sized media, and scan and copy functions can save you a detour to the school or local library, which won’t be open late at night (MSRP: $79.99)

HP Deskjet F4280 All-in-One Inkjet Printer: Fast 20 page per minute print speed in color, 26 in black and white, convenient scan and copy functions (MSRP: $79.99)

Kodak ESP5 All-in-One Inkjet Photo Printer: Prints at nearly 30 pages per minute in color and in black and white, features a 3 inch LCD screen for photo editing and printing, scans, copies, and prints photos PC-free from a number of compatible memory cards and PictBridge (MSRP: $169.99)

Canon PIXMA iP2600 Compact Inkjet Photo Printer: Prints at 17 pages per minute in color, 22 in black and white, good photo quality, and weighs only 8 lbs. (MSRP: $49.99)

In any case, think about what classes you’re taking this year and use these recommendations as a starting point to help you find the right printer. Have fun and remember these words of wisdom from high schooler Ferris Bueller: “Life goes by pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.”

(Photo via Morguefile)

Here are some other key benefits to buying LD Products’ new Magnetic Inkjet Photo Paper:

• You can cut your photos to a custom size in any shape.
• Regular paper photos require putting magnets on all four corners so they don’t curl, and they tend to fall off easily. Magnetic Inkjet Photo Paper sticks straight to your desired surface and stays there.
• Regular magnets can pose a choking hazard to your children. Magnetic Inkjet Photo Paper is safe, fun and easy to apply and remove.

4”x6” Magnetic Photo Paper comes in packs of 10 and 8.5”x11” Magnetic Photo Paper comes in packs of 20. Stock up today and stick your photos to your fridge, car, markerboard, or any other surface with an affinity for your magnetic memories.

I. Should You Buy a Printer?

To buy or not to buy your own inkjet or laser printer - that is the question when you head off to college, especially when your school has computer labs equipped with blocks of hefty laser printers. As we mentioned in our back to school intro post, your budget will obviously play a major role in your decision, especially with ink and toner costs adding up over time. But it’s certainly convenient to print a term paper or report in the comfort of your room, see how it looks, pack it in your bag, and go straight to class without taking a detour to an on-campus computer cluster.

Deciding whether or not to buy a printer comes down to cost comparison. First, estimate how many pages you’ll print this year. Next, call up your school or check online and find out how much it costs per page to print from a school printer. Multiply that by your estimated number of pages and you get the total cost of printing without buying your own printer. To get total cost of printing with your own printer, calculate cost per page, multiply by your estimated number of printed pages, and add it to the sticker price for the printer itself. Compare total cost of printing with your own printer to total cost of printing on school printers to see whether buying your own printer makes sense. That said, it’s hard to imagine printing exclusively from school or exclusively from your room. Certain circumstances like inclement weather or long queues at school make it more convenient to print from home, while other situations call for working and printing at the on-campus computer lab. As a result, it may be best to invest in your own printer and switch between printing at home and at school as needed.

II. What Should You Buy?

If you decide to buy a printer, ask yourself what kind of output you’re planning to print. If you’re a humanities major and you’re writing a lot of term papers, a monochrome laser printer probably makes sense because it specializes in high speed and high quality text at a lower cost per page. If you’re not planning to print as much, cost per page diminishes in importance, and an inexpensive inkjet printer can roll out solid text at a lower MSRP. Here’s a list of some new sub-$150 monochrome laser printers and sub-$100 inkjet printers to consider:

Lexmark X3650 All-in-One Inkjet Printer: Features PC-free photo printing, prints black and white text at 25 pages per minute, supports banner-sized media, and its scan and copy functions can save you a trip or two to the library (MSRP: $79.99)

HP Deskjet D2560 Inkjet Printer: Weighs just over 6 lbs. and churns out text at 20 pages per minute in color, 26 in black and white (MSRP: $49.99)

HP Deskjet F4280 All-in-One Inkjet Printer: Same print speed as HP Deskjet D2560 Inkjet Printer with scan and copy features (MSRP: $79.99)

Brother HL-2170W Monochrome Laser Printer: Prints at up to 23 pages per minute, high-yield toner cartridge prints up to 2600 pages, and features Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity (MSRP: $149.99)

Canon PIXMA iP2600 Photo Inkjet Printer: Weighs only 8 lbs. and prints at up to 22 pages per minute in black and white (MSRP: $49.99)

Hopefully this post gives you some ideas as you start the shopping process. For a more expansive list of prospective printers, check out our Printer Previews and Reviews or visit the LD Products website. Good luck this year and have fun.

(Photo via Morguefile)

Going back to school means you need a dependable printer to roll out term papers, reports, paper presentations, and pretty much any other project or assignment that calls for a hard copy. At the same time, buying a printer and consistently filling it up with the right ink or toner cartridges requires a bigger financial commitment than heading to the local office superstore and picking up a binder and a few notebooks. So what should you do as you head into the new school year? Does it make sense to buy a printer? And if so, which one should you buy? Over the next few posts, I’ll be presenting the pros and cons of buying your own printer for elementary and middle school students, high school students and college students. And once we decide whether a printer purchase makes sense at each educational level, I’ll be recommending appropriate printers for back to school among some of the newest products on the market. For today, let’s start with two inter-related factors you should consider as you decide what to buy.

1. Cost: Let’s end the speculation right now - unless you’re running the next Facebook or LD Products from your bedroom or dorm room, you’re not buying a 4-5 figure MFP that spits out Espressos and quarterly financial reports at 45 pages per minute. And as I mentioned in our recent cost per page post, you also need to keep track of how much it costs to keep your printer filled with ink or toner. Add the printer MSRP to the cost of consumables over the life of your machine and you get the total cost of ownership and usage, which you’re trying to keep as manageable as possible. At the same time, it doesn’t make sense to invest in an inept printer, especially if your school already has a decent model earmarked for student use. That said, here’s a good rule of thumb to remember: Inkjet printers tend to have a lower MSRP, but generally cost more to refill with ink. Laser printers often have a higher MSRP, but tend to cost less to refill with toner.

2. What You’re Printing: Most printers in today’s market tend to specialize in certain kinds of output. For example, inkjet printers tend to roll out vivid color photos while monochrome laser printers come in handy for turning out term papers and text-based documents at faster speeds. And if you’re printing color images and text in flyers and promos for your school club, color laser printers combine high-quality mixed output with high print speeds, albeit at a higher MSRP. So before you decide on a new printer, think about what you’re printing first.

Our next article will cover printers for college, and we’ll work our way back in time from there. But if you’d like to get a headstart on the shopping process, feel free to peruse our Printer Previews and printer review compilations or the LD Products website.

(Photo via MorgueFile)

M. David Stone of PC Magazine gives the Samsung ML-2851ND Monochrome Laser Printer an Editors’ Choice Award winning 4.5/5 for its quality output, built-in duplexer, and the fact that it tested at “an impressively fast speed for a printer at this price.” Stone also likes the relatively compact and lightweight frame, passable image and graphics quality, and standard 250 sheet capacity with the option to add another 250 sheet tray. Finally, “[a]s icing on an already attractive cake,” the Samsung ML-2851ND Monochrome Laser Printer offers a well-below average cost per page of 2 cents, not to mention an even lower 1.4 cents per page for compatible toner.

Justin Yu of CNET gives the Samsung ML-2851ND Monochrome Laser Printer a strong 7.5/10 mainly for its superlative text quality, speed, auto-duplexer and networking. When it comes to design, Yu reports that he “wouldn’t call it ugly; more like utterly forgettable,” which falls in sharp contrast to Samsung’s more elegant personal laser printers such as the ML-1630 and SCX-4500. Of course, beauty is only skin-deep, and the Samsung ML-2851ND Monochrome Laser Printer carries substance in spades. Yu concludes that this office laser printer is “a little more expensive than the competition, but its chart-topping test results speak for themselves.”

Finally, Peter Piazza of About.com gives the Samsung ML-2851ND Monochrome Laser Printer an excellent 4 stars out of 5 for basically the same reasons as Yu and Stone, adding that it provides an excellent way to round out your small office arsenal if you already own a fax machine, scanner and copier. Piazza even suggests that text quality is so good, you can save toner and print in draft mode for almost any job with a clear conscience. Bottom line, the Samsung ML-2851ND Monochrome Laser Printer makes an excellent choice as the final piece to your small office puzzle. But if you need quality prints and the versatility of a Wi-Fi enabled MFP, Piazza recommends the critically-acclaimed Brother MFC-7840W Monochrome Laser MFP.

M. David Stone of PC Magazine gives the HP Color Laserjet CM1312nfi MFP an impressive 4.5/5, earning it an Editors’ Choice Award. Stone likes the high quality output and full array of office-friendly features, including a 50 page auto document feeder that makes multi-page documents easier to process. However, the HP Color Laserjet CM1312nfi MFP lacks a duplexer, holds only 150 sheets of paper, and print speed is admittedly slow, which partially explains the lower price tag. That said, Stone feels that the good far outweighs the bad, making the HP Color Laserjet CM1312nfi MFP a more than capable all-in-one printer for lighter use in your home office or small business.

Josh Norem of Computer Shopper Magazine gives the HP Color Laserjet CM1312nfi MFP a very good 7.5/10 for its palatable price, memory card connectivity, 2.4” LCD, excellent text and inkjet-like 4”x6” photo quality, password protection and fast turnaround times on photos of all sizes. He also likes the ease of setup and convenient optical character recognition (OCR) software that assesses images and documents and enables you to edit them. On the other hand, Norem agrees with Stone about the low paper capacity, and he also wishes the HP Color Laserjet CM1312nfi MFP had Wi-Fi. Text print speed is also a bit slow, although the review finds a silver lining in noting that at least “HP isn’t fudging the numbers.” In the end, the review acknowledges that to get down to $499.99, “a few corners had to be cut.” But despite that, Computer Shopper concludes that the HP Color Laserjet CM1312nfi MFP “is a very well-rounded, all-in-one printer that’s capable of performing a wide range of home and office tasks quite well.”

M. David Stone of PC Magazine gives the Brother MFC-7840W Monochrome Laser MFP an Editors’ Choice Award-worthy 4/5. Stone likes the fact that while many other laser MFPs only offer you some combination of scanning, copying, faxing and network connectivity, the Brother MFC-7840W Monochrome Laser MFP gives you everything in an affordable $300 package. Image quality is good enough for internal memos or in-house office printouts, and print speed matches other top laser printers like the Canon imageCLASS MF4150 Laser MFP. Stone also likes the auto document feeder and relatively compact 24.5 lb. frame, although he thinks the Brother MFC-7840W Monochrome Laser MFP could use a duplexer.

Peter Piazza of About.com gives the Brother MFC-7840W Monochrome Laser MFP 5 stars, citing the same basic reasons Stone does for his rave review. Piazza also notes that he had a relatively easy time connecting to a wireless network, which represents a “huge advantage for home or small businesses where there’s no dedicated IT team.” Overall, the review concludes that it’s “hard to come up with anything negative to say about this all-in-one.”

Last but not least, Brian Chen of Macworld gives the Brother MFC-7840W Monochrome Laser MFP a solid 3.5/5 for its speed, easy-to-read text quality, solid image quality and wireless network connectivity. But in contrast to Piazza, Chen found wireless networking a little difficult to set up, which led him to flip through the user manual a bit before figuring it out. He also finds the scanner a little slow and the accompanying software a little lacking. More specifically, he reports that you can only do preview scans for certain parts of the glass depending on document size, meaning you may have to resort to a little trial and error before you get it right.

Overall, the experts agree that the Brother MFC-7840W Monochrome Laser MFP offers excellent value, versatility and performance. Look for this monochrome laser MFP to do especially well with small and home-based businesses.