Deposit a Check using an iPhone

As a freelance writer, I receive most of the payments for my services online, but every once in a while, I get a check in the mail and have to go to the bank to deposit it.

It would appear that USAA bank is removing any reason for me to go to the bank with an iPhone app that allows me to deposit my checks virtually. All I need to do is take a picture of the front of my check with the iPhone, then turn the check over and snap the back of it. Once I hit e-send, the money is in the bank.

Of course, I don’t have an iPhone, and that is the case for many others. Another limitation on this new paperless service is it is currently only available for active-duty military personnel. I guess that just makes sense, doesn’t it? How can someone stationed in Iraq make a run to the bank?

In case you are wondering, the user of this service is required to destroy the check or, if nothing else, write “VOID” on it. If it were me, I would check just to make certain that my funds made it to the bank before I do something like that.

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Smartphones Less Than $100

Budget smartphones for business users are now a reality. In fact, you can get one heck of a powerful smartphone for as little as $50 these days (with a two-year contract).

BlackBerry Internet Service, Google Apps, and Microsoft Exchange's over-the-air account synchronization mean you don't necessarily have to invest in expensive extra servers to power your budget smartphones. And BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian Series 60 phones can all be centrally managed. Depending on the infrastructure, that means an IT department can disable the built-in camera, control which applications are installed, encrypt company files, and wipe data from a lost handset.

Whether you're a manager or business owner wanting to keep your employees connected while on the go, or a freelance consultant looking for a cheap way to stay in touch with clients, here's a roundup of the best low-cost business smartphones, sorted by carrier:

AT&T

Apple iPhone 3G (AT&T)

$99.99 (with two-year contract)
The iPhone 3G has excellent Microsoft Exchange connectivity, letting you sync up your calendars, contacts, and e-mails with your corporate server. And no matter what kind of business you're in, there's probably an app for that.

Nokia E71x (AT&T)

$99.99 (with two-year contract and $50 mail-in rebate)
The Symbian-powered E71x is an excellent mobile office due to its powerful Web browser, built-in Office document editing, and Microsoft Exchange support. It's also just plain handsome to look at.

Samsung Jack SGH-i637 (AT&T)

$99.99 (with two-year contract and $100 mail-in rebate)
The Samsung Jack is a near-perfect blend of 3G and Wi-Fi radios, good voice quality, Windows Mobile messaging, and sharp executive styling. It could even tempt a few consumers, too, if they don't like the (identically priced) iPhone 3G.

Sprint

BlackBerry Curve 8330 (Sprint)

$49.99 (with two-year contract and $100 mail-in rebate)
The Curve 8330 is beginning to age in the face of RIM's newest handsets like the Tour 9630 and Curve 8900 on other carriers. But the 8330 still scores with its built-in GPS, excellent voice quality, and stellar push e-mail—and you simply can't beat the price.

T-Mobile

BlackBerry Curve 8320 (T-Mobile)

$74.99 (with two-year contract)
The BlackBerry Curve shows up on a lot of "best of" lists due to its ideal blend of power, features, and (lately) low price. The Curve 8320 is particularly interesting due to its $9.99/month unlimited Wi-Fi calling capability on T-Mobile. That can mean hundreds of dollars in savings over the course of a year for each employee (at least if they talk where there's a Wi-Fi signal).

T-Mobile Dash (T-Mobile)

$49.99 (with two-year contract)
Let's be honest here—the Dash is simply old. Compared with newer Windows Mobile handsets, it's sluggish. But it does run Windows Mobile 6 and offers all of the usual Microsoft-related benefits at a very low price. Plus, it's exceptionally slim and light for a slab QWERTY smartphone.

Verizon Wireless

BlackBerry Curve 8330 (Verizon)

$49.99 (with two-year contract)
The Curve 8330 on Verizon has somewhat fewer features than the Sprint version, as it lacks an IM client and mobile TV support out of the box. But it's still a compelling choice—especially at this price.

HTC Ozone (Verizon)

$49.99 (with two-year contract)
The HTC Ozone offers a comfortable keyboard, and there's plenty of Windows Mobile power underneath the hood. This is also a true world phone, with both CDMA and GSM compatibility, and Verizon lets you unlock its GSM SIM slot if you've been a customer in good standing for 60 days.

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Windows vs. Linux

Where's your comfort zone? Windows, Mac, Linux? An unintellectual, emotional attachment to an operating environment often determines what consumers buy and may determine whether Google Chrome can ultimately compete with Windows.

In the consumer laptop space, specifically Netbooks, there isn't much hope for a Linux-based operating system like Google Chrome in the near term. So, first the bad news.

Market researcher iSuppli released a report Friday that I agree with. It begins with the usual, saying that Google's Linux-based Chrome operating system sets the stage for a battle of the Titans (Google versus Microsoft). But what it said after that affirmed my own convictions (and echoed comments I had heard before from other analysts).

"The small penetration of Linux in Netbooks is not due to any technical shortcomings," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst, compute platforms research for iSuppli. "Because the vast majority of people who buy Netbooks are consumers, who do not have a high degree of knowledge of the key players in the OS market, they are going with the names that they know. And in PCs, that name is Microsoft."

The report continues: "For Google to be successful, it needs to promote and position its brand so that non-tech-savvy consumers will be comfortable buying a Netbook running its operating system rather than one from Microsoft. This will be a major challenge."

In other words, it's hard to move people out of their comfort zone, particularly if the alternative is fractured like Linux. But there's a silver lining for Google's OS. The comfort zone is shifting. If consumers spend more time on a social-networking site (Facebook, Twitter) or a Web-based productivity environment (Google search, Gmail, Google docs) that becomes their comfort zone (the so-called "cloud") rather than the Windows, or Apple, desktop.

Of course, that's all just theory unless something else happens. What's that extra something? Give consumers a high-profile, respected brand like Google packaged with a slick Netbook and more than a few more could break their ties with Windows (because it becomes irrelevant). Particularly if the price is right.

It's been done before. A charismatic device like the iPhone proves that. In that case, consumers left the tenuous comfort zone of their interface-challenged cell phones in droves and embraced the iPhone.

But this doesn't happen often. And you need a very big, truly innovative company like Apple or Google to pull it off.

Conversations I had this week with both Texas Instruments and Qualcomm executives offer hope in the long term. TI and Qualcomm are building the chips that Chrome will run on and both have been working with Google. (TI told me that they have the Chrome OS running in some form already on their silicon.) Though Intel also says it is working with Google, I suspect Chrome is more of an ARM processor play than an Intel play.

Whatever happens in the next 12 months or so will be interesting and, at the very least, can only add to growing momentum behind mobile devices using ARM processors and non-Windows operating environments.

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Travelling with laptop: Checklist for You

Notebooks are made to hit the road. But many people don't actually travel very often with them -- until vacation time, that is.

That's when lots of planning needs to be done to be sure that your notebook gives you what you need when you're away. Here's a checklist of things to remember when you're preparing your digital travel companion for the big trip.


Ditch your laptop bag

Thieves love notebook computers -- and for many of the same reasons you do. They're light, easy to transport, and they have a decent resale value.

So before you go, be sure you're not going to satisfy the needs of a notebook thief. First of all, consider ditching the notebook carrying case, since these scream "notebook computer" to everyone around you.

Notebooks and their accessories are small these days, and they can fit just as easily in a less conspicuous carrying case, such as a backpack or inside of carry-on luggage.

Go for tracing software

Of course, notebooks can be stolen in all sorts of ways, and some of those ways you really can't prepare well for. So if you keep valuable or sensitive data on your notebook, consider investing in tracing software that will help you or the authorities locate your notebook, should it get stolen.

Laptop recovery software includes packages such as Absolute Software's LoJack for Laptops, PC PhoneHome or zTrace. These programmes spring into action once the thieves attempt to go online with your notebook.

Depending upon the software, once the burglar goes online, either the notebook's location is tracked, the computer is locked down, or the data on the notebook is deleted or encrypted.

Backup plan

If the hard drive in your notebook computer is going to go belly up, the bumps and bruises of the road are likely to be the cause. So before you start moving, back up the data on your notebook computer.

External storage today is cheap, and using an external hard drive for backups is as easy as plugging in a USB cable. So don't put the task off. For critical data files, you may also want to consider using an online backup service, such as Mozy, which could make your most valuable data available to you from anywhere that you have an Internet connection.

Check battery usage

If you'll need to use your notebook computer for long periods of time on battery power -- as on a long flight, for instance -- you'll need to think about how best to conserve power. First, before you go, assess the longevity of your notebook computer's battery. Remember that older batteries lose their charge more quickly.

By far the biggest power drain on a battery is the notebook's LCD screen. Turning the LCD's brightness down can help conserve battery power, as can setting the LCD up so that it powers off more quickly than when you're at home.

If your notebook computer is equipped with features you don't use -- such as Bluetooth or WAN -- turn them off. Doing so will conserve yet more power and extend the life of the battery.

Ensure Internet access

These days, a notebook computer without Internet access can be pretty useless, depending upon your needs. So scope out your access to the Internet before you leave, and make provisions for having no access well ahead of time.

If you need Internet access only at a hotel, make sure that the hotel you stay at provides wireless or wired access. If wireless is the only access available, ask for a room as close to the wireless access point - or router - as possible.

If you need to stay connected while travelling by car, use a cellular data card for roving Internet access. This type of Internet connection is available anywhere that you can get cellular.

Check accessories

Finally, don't forget to make a list of all of the little accessories that make you truly productive with your notebook. Do you rely, for example, on a compact flash or other digital card reader to get images into your notebook? Be sure to throw that in the bag.

And will you be travelling to a foreign country where the electrical outlets are different? Get a universal power adapter at a local electronics store, and be sure to pack that. Everyone's notebook toolkit is different. Just remember to take yours.

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Want to Print your Own Publishing Materials

If you plan to print your own marketing brochures or other desktop publishing materials, you'll want to use one of these heavy duty laser printers.

The central concept of desktop publishing—that you can print material yourself rather than go to a print shop—has been around since the earliest monochrome laser desktop printers. Today, just about any printer can do the job, if you don't care much about output quality. For flyers advertising your lawn-mowing business, for example, most potential customers won't care if the page was obviously printed on a cheap ink jet printer, with ink that smears when it gets wet. But if you need high-quality output with a professional look, and particularly if you want to include color, graphics, and photos, you need to be pickier.

When you're looking for a printer for desktop publishing, keep in mind that high quality for one kind of output doesn't necessarily translate to high quality for other kinds.

Top quality text and line graphics require sharp, well-formed edges. Simple graphics (without gradients) also need vibrant colors and smooth fills for solid areas. More complex graphics need to handle gradients well, so colors change smoothly. Photos, finally, need even better gradient handling and the ability to maintain the subtle differences in shading that show the structure in a cloud, for example. But photos won't suffer much if they can't print sharp edges.

Given these different kinds of output, give some thought to what you need to print. Keep in mind too that for most desktop publishing materials, you don't need true photo quality. Depending on what you're printing, you'll probably want photo quality that would at least match a newspaper photo (for a client newsletter or a trifold brochure on matte paper, for example), or a typical slick magazine (for a one-page handout on glossy paper, for example).

The good news is that a growing number of printers are good enough at all kinds of output—text, graphics, and photos—to print professional-looking materials. Even better, if you tend to print in batches of just two or three hundred copies at a time, the cost per page will be less than you'd pay at your local copy shop.

In most cases, the most important type of output for this kind of application is text quality. All four of the printers included here handle text particularly well, with at least half of the fonts in our text tests qualifying as both easily readable and well formed at 5 points. All four are laser printers, because text printed on an ink jet on most papers is almost always visibly inferior to laser-printed text, and the ink tends to smear when it gets wet. (Some ink jet inks resist smearing better than others, but smear-resistant isn't the same as smear-proof).

Two of the printers—the HP Color LaserJet CP1518ni Printer and Xerox Phaser 6280DN—are in the top tier for color laser graphics quality. Both are also single-function printers. If you prefer an all-in-one (AIO), also known as a multi-function printer (MFP), the other two included here—the HP Color LaserJet CM1312nfi MFP and Xerox Phaser 6180MFP/N—are close to that level for graphics, but a touch below it. Both HP printers are in the top tier for color laser photo quality, with both Xerox printers just below that level. All offer photos that qualify as near photo quality.

If you want to be your own print shop, you need to be selective in selecting a printer. Any of these four printers is a good choice for printing your own marketing materials and other desktop publishing output.

Featured in this Roundup:

HP Color LaserJet CM1312nfi MFP ($499.99 direct)

Squarely aimed at a small office or busy home office, the HP Color LaserJet CM1312nfi MFP combines a low price with high-quality output and a full set of functions. It works as a standalone fax machine and color copier; it includes a network connector and an automatic document feeder (ADF); and it can both scan to a PC and fax from a PC over a network.

HP Color LaserJet CP1518ni Printer ($399.99 direct)

The HP Color LaserJet CP1518ni Printer takes up less space than many ink jets, which makes it small enough to fit comfortably on a desktop to use as a personal printer. Even so, it includes a network connector, so you can share it easily in a small office or on a home network. It can also print directly from PictBridge Cameras and memory cards.

Xerox Phaser 6180MFP/N ($999 direct)

The most expensive printer in this group, the Xerox Phaser 6180MFP/N is also the faster of the two AIOs—essentially tied with the Xerox Phaser 6280 for print speed. In addition to printing high-quality output, it can scan and fax over a network and work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and e-mail sender, complete with a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF) for multi-page documents.

Xerox Phaser 6280DN ($649 direct)

The Xerox Phaser 6280DN is meant as a color laser workhorse for small offices and workgroups. Along with its high-quality output, it offers reasonably fast speed and excellent paper handling, with a built-in duplexer for printing on both sides of a page plus a 400-sheet input capacity divided into a 250-sheet drawer and a 150-sheet multi-purpose tray.

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Turn your iPhone into a touch pad

The free JumiMouse app turns your iPhone into a roomy touch pad controller.

You've probably heard of Mobile Air Mouse, the clever app that turns your iPhone into, well, an air mouse. (It's currently on sale for $1.99, by the way.)

JumiMouse is a bit different: It turns your iPhone (or iPod Touch) into an oversize touch pad, complete with left and right mouse buttons, tap-and-drag support, and so on.

The free JumiMouse app turns your iPhone into a roomy touch pad controller.

Why would you want such a thing? For starters, JumiMouse could take the place of a laptop touch pad that's worn and no longer working properly.

It could also solve the common problem of accidentally grazing the laptop touch pad with your thumb, causing the cursor to jump and your document to get messed up. Just deactivate the touch pad and use JumiMouse instead.

Finally, JumiMouse is an ideal replacement for netbook touch pads, which are notoriously tiny. The iPhone screen is ginormous in comparison.

JumiMouse communicates with your PC via local or ad-hoc Wi-Fi. To use the app, you must first install the free Jumi Controller utility. It's currently compatible with Windows XP and Vista (32-bit). I tried it with Windows 7: no go.

On a Vista system, JumiMouse was a snap to set up. My iPhone immediately detected the server, and a tap later I was controlling the cursor from my screen. Everything worked perfectly, and I detected no lag between my finger movements and the cursor.

At first I was disappointed by the lack of options for things like pointer speed and size. But it turns out that Windows recognizes JumiMouse as hardware, so all you do is hop into the Control Panel and tweak the standard Mouse settings to your liking.

This is a fabulous little app for anyone looking to control a PC--for any reason--with an iPhone or iPod Touch. Amazingly, JumiMouse is free.


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Make Calls without SIM from your mobile

Cherry from Vincent Battaglia on Vimeo.

The chances of me being genuinely amazed at something I see a Belgian tech company achieve are rather slim. But occasionally, it happens. Last week I went to local entrepreneur meetup BetaGroup and saw five startups pitch their stuff to the 200-person audience.

The last one to get its five minutes of fame was Cherry, a new mobile operator that promised to “revolutionize the telecom world”. Needless to say, I was as curious as I was skeptical.

Then the company’s CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didn’t need to launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service.

I was intrigued. By now you’ll have guessed that the calling was done over Wi-Fi, which I suppose isn’t really unique even if it made me wonder how they did it without launching a third-party app like Skype. Looking to learn more, I went to their official coming-out event the evening after, when they presented the newly founded company to a host of local geeks in more detail, giving them the chance to beta-test the service for a couple of weeks to iron out bugs before launching publicly.

Here’s how it works: Cherry - which is essentially an MVNO - pre-installs software (so yes, in the demo there was actually an application running in the background) on smartphones which it will sell as a packaged product, starting with a Symbian version for Nokia E-Series phones and expanding to other platforms later. Once activated, Cherry lets you call your contacts either over Wi-Fi or the GSM network when you insert a SIM card. Take out the card, and you can only call over a wireless Internet connection.

The funky part? Cherry automatically switches you from one to the other. This process, called a handover, can seriously cut into your current calling and roaming costs when you’re a frequent traveler or on the road often, and it doesn’t even require you to change numbers. You could easily dial your office number from your home over Wi-Fi, leave the house and have the software automatically have Cherry switch you over to a carrier’s cellular network once you’re out of range. There’s no interruption of service during the handover, which means you won’t even notice - until you receive your bill, since it’s obviously cheaper to call over Wi-Fi than the GSM network. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this automatic handover is a quite unique value proposition.

I did a short interview with Cherry CEO Bernard Noël De Burlin and Telco Service Manager aka mobile guru Davy Van De Moere after the event (apologies for the abrupt ending, my Flip’s batteries ran out of juice).

And just in case you don’t have a couple of minutes to watch the video, let me save you the trouble of asking: support for iPhone and Android are on the top of their list and a Windows Mobile-compatible version should be available soon.

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Firefox 3.5's new features

The browser battle has just got hotter. A new version of the Internet browser Firefox has been released, offering users more speed and privacy and greater compliance with new Internet video standards.

The release of Firefox 3.5 came as the open source browser is proving an increasingly formidable challenger to Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8. In June, Firefox has a 22.5 percent market share according to web metrics company Net Applications, behind Internet Explorer's 65.5 percent. Though Internet Explorer's share has been declining for some time, the slide has accelerated over the last year since Firefox released version 3.0.

Here’s looking into the eight new features in Firefox 3.5.

Super speed

Firefox 3.5 includes the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which Mozilla says makes it deliver unprecedented performance with today's complex Web applications. Firefox 3.5 is more than two times faster than Firefox 3 and ten times faster than Firefox 2, claims the Mozilla group.

Open video and audio

With Firefox 3.5, users can enjoy video and audio content from within their browser, without the need for any plug-ins. Web developers can embed audio and video into Web pages in open format Ogg Theora, courtesy a new feature of HTML 5. Mozilla claims that it's the first to integrate this feature directly into the browser.

Web developers can use these technologies to design pages that interact with video content in different ways, offering richer interactive experience beyond controlling playback and volume.

With a new management function in place, Firefox keeps memory usage under control. The XPCOM cycle collector continuously cleans up unused memory.

Forget This Site

Firefox 3.5 includes features designed to protect users' privacy online and provide greater control over their personal data. With Firefox 3.5 users can have their browser history never record visits to a particular site (say Savesavitabhabi.com). To use the feature in Firefox 3.5, a user just needs to open the History panel, right-click any Savesavitabhabi.com reference, and choose 'Forget This Site.'

The Forget this Site feature can remove every trace of a site from the user’s browser. To remove all private data or activity of the past few hours, a user needs to click on Clear Recent History, another Firefox-only feature that gives him full control over what stays and what goes.


Location Aware Browsing

Location Aware Browsing aims to save users time by allowing websites to know where they are located. If a user chooses to share his location with a website, it can use that information to find nearby points of interest and return additional, useful data like maps of the area. It is an optional feature.

Also, Firefox assures that it doesn’t share users' location without their permission.



Downloadable fonts

Users can view a wider variety of fonts on web sites while surfing. Site designers and developers can create custom fonts that will be displayed and rendered properly even if they don’t have the font installed on their computers.



Easy web site organisation

This feature aims to get users site in order. Users can simply arrange the order of their tabs by dragging them in one swift move of their mouse. Or, if their browser window is getting cluttered with too many tabs, they just requite to drag a tab out of its existing spot and it will automatically open up in a new window.

Users can read feeds using an online Web service, a client-side feed reader or by creating a Firefox Live Bookmark. So there’s no need to comb the Web for the latest news and updates.

Over 6,000 add-ons

Mozilla's a growing library offers over 6,000 Firefox add-ons, the little extras that a user chooses to download and install for his browser to make it works his way. For example, manage online auctions, upload digital photos, see the weather forecast in a glance and listen to music all from the convenience of his browser.

There’s no need to open a new window or a tab for each task. If a user is not sure where to begin, he can try Fashion Your Firefox which is a handy Web application that recommends add-ons based on his interests.

Also, restart the browser without losing your place after you install an add-on or software update. And, if Firefox or your computer unexpectedly closes, you don’t have to spend time recovering data or retracing your steps through the Web. If you’re in the middle of typing an email, you’ll pick up where you left off, even down to the last word you typed.

Gets new Indian language

Firefox 3.5 has added support for more Indian languages than its last major release. The browser, which supports all three major operating systems Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, is now available in eight Indian languages, up one from Firefox 3.

The new addition is Assamese. Firefox 3.0 supports Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi and Telugu. Other Indian languages that are likely to be included in future upgrades of the browser are Malayalam, Oriya and Tamil.

Firefox has fully localised versions in 63 languages with an additional 11 language versions still in beta.

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Reasons iPod Touch Owners Shouldn't Upgrade to OS 3.0

With all the hoopla about the iPhone 3GS's speed, what about its little non-cellular brother, the touch? I took a second-generation touch, (reportedly sporting a 533-MHz ARM processor, versus the 3GS's 600-MHz chip).

I ran the touch through a battery of performance tests before and after the OS upgrade from 2.2 to 3.0, and compared the results with those for the iPhone 3G and 3GS.

	iPod Touch/OS 2.2.1	iPod touch/OS 3.0	iPhone 3G/OS 2.2.1	iPhone 3G/OS 3.0	iPhone 3GS/OS 3.0
Boot time from start	19 seconds	29	34	47	20
Load weather app and refresh weather	1.7	3.3	7	4	1
Download the 99 cent app "Benchmark" by Matt Matteson and run it	100	100	100	100	489
Load Twitterfon and refresh Tweets	5	6	16	18	6
Load NYTimes app and refresh articles	7.5	8	13	22	8
Load expedia.com (Wi-Fi, no 3G	12	13.2	15	17	8.7
Load Bejewelled 2 to menu	7.5	8.2	Not tested	11.7	4.4
SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark 0.9	103.6	37.4	Not tested	42	16.7

Though JavaScript performance has tripled, the new OS 3.0 adds a good chunk of time to startup the devices. And despite the much faster JavaScript performance, web pages load slightly slower in OS 3.0 than in 2.2. Mobile analyst Sascha Segan and I consider that it's clearly to do with graphics and layout rendering rather than JavaScript. I'm surprised the browser isn't faster in general, the way Safari 4 is on the desktop.

The takeaway from this is that you probably shouldn't bother handing over ten bucks to Apple for OS 3.0 if you're a touch user who wants faster performance. If, on the other hand, cut-and-paste, Spotlight search, and streaming video apps like MLB At Bat are things you can't live with, you have no option other than to by the new operating system. You should also feel good if you're a second-gen touch user who likes to run apps: you're in better shape, performance-wise, than iPhone 3G owners!

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$100 Color Laser Printer May Not Be the Best Deal

With my four-year-old, $2,000 color laser printer on death's doorstep, the idea of a $100 color laser printer holds a lot of appeal. But as I did more research; talked to pcmag.com's printer guru, M. David Stone; and fact-checked with printer vendors, I've come to the conclusion: Cheapest to buy may not be cheapest to own. As you can tell by the chart above, the total cost of ownership over several years (out to 50,000 pages printed) is about the same no matter whether you pay $100, $250, or $500 for a color laser printer. The razor blades cost so much, you may as well buy a nice razor.

It's going to cost you $2,500 to $3,000 (ka-ching) to print 50,000 pages for just about any personal color laser printer printing 80% monochrome pages, 20% color pages. (Print all 50,000 pages in color and you're looking at $7,500.) Somewhere past 10,000 pages printed and before 20,000 pages, the total cost to print will differ by less than $100 regardless of who makes the printer. My conclusion: A costlier, robust printer such as the Editors' Choice Xerox Phaser 6280/N printer at $500 street with a lower per-page printing cost may be a better deal even if you can buy the Editors' Choice Konica Minolta magicolor 1600W for as little as $110 now ($120-$130 two weeks ago), or buy a networked variant, the Konica Minolta magicolor 1650EN, for about $200 street. In fact, midway through your first year of ownership, a costlier-to-buy printer such as the Xerox may cost less out-of-pocket (for a while). Here's why: Xerox ships the 6280 with a standard cartridge set, good for 2,200 prints (color) or 3,000 prints (black). To keep the initial price low, the Konica Minoltas come with a starter kit good for 500 pages, which might last only a couple months. But it does allow for a nearly $100 color laser printer. All four Konica Minolta cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) together run $300-$450 depending on whether you buy regular or high-capacity cartridges, so after those first 500 pages, you've paid out the same, maybe a bit more, than buying a $500 color laser with longer-life starter cartridges.

What If Technophobes Live in Your House or Office?

My experience has been that low cost-per-page or low total-cost-of-ownership is great but what really matters is: Can my family make the printer print when I away? (And can I make it print when I'm home, since I'm no rocket scientist, either.) My buying criteria includes:

Networking.

So everyone in the house (or small office) has access to the nicest printer. The printer can be wired Ethernet; just locate it near the wireless access point with a (typically) four-port wired Ethernet switch if other PCs or laptops in the house are wireless.

Networking anyone can set up. When I'm on the road, the last thing I want to get late at night is a call from a child or spouse saying the printer won't print and they can't get the driver to reinstall. In this regard, Xerox is world-class. To install, you drop the CD in the PC's optical drive, click Yes or Accept a couple times, and the printer installs across the network. This story isn't meant to be purely Xerox vs. Konica Minolta, but the 1600W and 1650EN are not in the same league as Xerox when it comes to driver setup. Probably no one is.

Duplexing. Sure, it saves paper but also when you want to print a greeting card or multi-page brochure with material on both sides, it does the work for you, and correctly. Who hasn't wasted paper trying to manual-duplex a print job? After you print the first side, there are eight ways you can put paper back in printer, four ways won't fit (paper turned sideways), and three of the other four ways are wrong. Xerox has a separate model with a duplexer, the Xerox 6280/DN, for $600 street, or $100 more, while the duplexer option bought separately for either Xerox or Konica Minolta is about $200.
Big paper tray. Cheap printers often have 100- or 150-sheet trays. Good printers hold a ream of paper (500 sheets). In-between printers hold 250 sheets. Just once when your printer's low-capacity tray runs out on page 19 of a 21 page report and you don't notice the missing two pages - until you go to present the report, or your kid gets marked down for an incomplete paper - do you bless the bigger tray. You can also add a second, 500-sheet tray, but $100-$200 is a lot to pay for convenience. Here, the two printers are close: the magicolor 1600W has a 200-sheet tray, the Phaser 6280/N has 250.

Color print speed. To save money, low-cost printers (such as the Konicas) may take four passes to lay down toner before fusing it to the page. Their color print speed is about a quarter (25%) of the monochrome print speed. A single-pass color laser (such as the Xerox) runs at 75% or better of its mono print speed.

Little things. Is there a printer display, and if so is it LED indicator lights only or an LCD display or an illuminated LCD display you can actually read in low light? Is there a button that says Reset and does it actually stop printing right now, or is like the close-elevator button that seems to be connected to nothing? Is the printer host-based, meaning it needs your PC to create the image, rather than the printer?

Methodology

To create the cost comparison table, I made a bunch of assumptions, starting with: The printer vendors aren't lying about cost per page of printing, so it's okay to use their numbers. Since there are ISO standards for calculating print cost that they all use, that eliminates a lot of fudging. They still can fudge on whether the cost per page is just toner or all consumables. You might need a cleaning kit at 25,000 pages or a new drum at 50,000 pages, although I'm guessing with a $100 printer you'd get a new drum by buying a new printer.

You also have to decide whether to calculate costs based on the standard (cheaper to buy) or extended-life (cheaper cost per page) print cartridges. If the printer maker doesn't specify, it's a safe bet they're using the costlier to buy, cheaper to own extended life cartridges when discussing cost per page.

Anyway, I used these printing assumptions and cost per page figures:

One color page printed per four monochrome pages printed. This ratio is variable and it's hard to pin down since printer makers don't typically share their findings, but you can increase the mono-to-color ratio and punch the cost down by installing the print driver twice, once as a monochrome-default printer and once as a color printer, and hope your family realizes there's no need to print most web pages in color. You don't always need color: Whether you print the boarding pass in color or monochrome, you'll still get on the plane. This actually is the biggest variable in printer cost: Getting users to not print color when it's not essential.

Cost: Xerox, 2.7 cents per page monochrome, 13.9 cent color for the extended life cartridge. (With standard cartridges, it would be 2.9 cents per page monochrome, 16.6 cents for color.)

Cost: Konica Minolta, 2.9 cents monochrome, 16.6 cents color for the extended life cartridge.

While you always should buy extended life cartridges, unless you fear the printer is about to die, you may suffer sticker shock and fall back to the regular cartridges. A set of four extended-life Xerox cartridges runs $850 (5,900 color pages, 7,000 monochrome pages) vs. $410 for standard life Xerox cartridges vs. $500 for the printer complete with four standard life cartridges. While Xerox' cost per page (consumables cost only) is less than Konica Minolta's, it's a bit more if you fall back to Xerox' standard toner cartridge but use the extended-life Konica Minolta cartridges.

The chart shows the cost to print using the initial toner load (500 pages for the two Konica Minoltas, 2,200/3,000 pages for the Xerox Phaser 6280/N), which is the flat blade of the hockey stick curve, then uses a blended cost per page (four monochrome pages for each one color page printed) up through 50,000 pages. Actually, the out of pocket cost is a bit more spiky. You pay for the printer, pay nothing for a couple weeks or months, then you're hit with a $300 to $850 bill for toner, then you don't have any more costs for months and months. Often it's the thought of buying one more set of cartridges that gets you to thinking about a new printer, since the next generation will probably cost even less per page to print, and have better print quality.

The Bottom Line

Unless I place no value on my time, figuring out the best deal in a printer exceeds the cost of some of the printers I'm looking it. Most likely I'll go with a printer with built-in networking and duplexing, even if it costs more up front. The $100 upcharge for the duplexer should be considered not as a 20% surcharge on a $500 printer price, but as a drop in the bucket vs. the $3,000 I'll spend on a printer over its life. And I need to convince myself that paying more for the extended life-cartridges makes more sense, even if you have to come up with a more money to make the toner last longer. If I spent $1,000-$1,500 for a color laser printer or solid ink printer, the cost per page would be less, but probably never low enough to make back the purchase price unless I printed thousands and thousands of pages a month. In a lot of homes and small offices, you may not even go through 1,000 sheets a month. And even the cheapest lasers, such as the Konica Minoltas and Xerox, are rated are more sheets per month duty cycle, 35,000 and 70,000, respectively, than I may print before moving on past the printer.

On the other hand, you may print more than you think. That's the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished theory: When you've got a color laser that duplexes, you wind up printing out that Outlook calendar, all 12 months worth, more frequently. Your kids' friends sometimes come by to print a 10-page report. And you'll do more things for your church or civic group. Those are all good causes.

If you're making comparisons of your own, find out:

* What's the life of the toner that comes with the printer? That may be something you'll have to hunt down. Few printer ads have a bullet point on the features list: "Included toner only good for 500 pages."
* What is the cost per page after that? Assume you'll be quoted the cost-per-page for extended-life cartridges. And what's the cost per page for the standard toner cartridge?
What's the cost for a replacement toner cartridge set? Assume you'll be quoted the price for the cheaper standard set.
* Are there consumables to buy (waste kit, cleaning kit, replacement drum) and how far into the printer's life?
* What does the toner (genuine toner) cost through third parties? The more popular the printer, the more likely you'll find toner discounted through online sellers, and available at a local office supplies store if you desperately need toner today. I'm not so much worried about third-party toner damaging the printer as I am about lousy print quality. What's the purpose of buying a good color printer if you're not getting good color prints?

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Want to Buy a Dedicated Photo Printer

Looking for a printer to print photos and nothing but? There are good choices out there, and we help you to narrow them down.

One of the more specialized classes of printers is the consumer-level dedicated photo printer. These printers are typically limited to a maximum paper size of 2 by 3, 4 by 6, or 5 by 7 inches (or panoramic variations on these sizes), but the category isn't defined just by its limits. Dedicated photo printers are relatively small and portable. They're also much less computer printers than they are standalone consumer electronics products, with an emphasis on ease of use. If you're in the market for one, here are the questions that will help you home in on the right choice.

Do You Need Just a Printer or Something More?

There's no such thing as a dedicated photo printer all-in-one, but some models add functions beyond printing. Most include menus with basic editing to crop an image, remove red-eye, and the like. A few add so many editing choices that they're essentially home photo kiosks, even adding a large touch screen to let you enter commands easily.

Some include enough memory to store hundreds of photos so you can bring the printer with you, show the photos, and print them. Some include an optical drive to let you archive photos from memory cards without a computer. And some, finally, are built into other kinds of devices, like a photo frame or a camera.

Do You Print Black-and-White Photos?

With most printer categories, you should consider whether you really need color. Photo printers turn the question on its head, so you should consider whether you need black and white, which many of these printers can't handle well. The most common flaw is a visible tint, or different color tints for different shades of gray. If you print black-and-white photos, you'll need to check out black-and-white photo quality quite apart from the printer's color photo quality.

How Big a Printer Are You Comfortable With?

Sizes for inexpensive dedicated photo printers range from small enough to fit in a pocket to too large to carry very often. If you want to bring a printer with you to events like parties or Little League games, pick a size you won't mind carrying. Also consider whether you'll need to run it from batteries. If so, make sure there's a battery available, if only as an option. In addition, find out how many photos you can print on a full charge.

How Are You Going to Connect?

Or, more broadly, what do you want to print from? Most dedicated photo printers can print from a computer over a USB connection, but they're really designed as standalone devices. The majority print directly from PictBridge cameras and memory cards. (Check for the memory-card format you want to use.) Nearly as many can print from USB keys. A few print from optical disc or internal memory (but you need to transfer the files to the memory first, so find out what connection you need to use to transfer the photos). Finally, some can connect by Bluetooth to print from cell phones and other Bluetooth devices.

What Level of Output Quality Do You Need?

Almost any inkjet or thermal-dye printer will at least match the output quality you'll see typically in drugstore prints. A newer technology called ZINK, which is currently limited to printers with a 2-by-3-inch print size, offers lower-quality output, which is best described as good enough for wallet-size photos. Whatever printer you're considering, be sure to check on the output quality before buying.

Two other issues fall loosely under the heading of quality: ruggedness and lifetime. Photos from most printers today are reasonably waterproof and scratch resistant, but some fare better than others. If you can't get samples to test yourself, you can find information on both features in PCMag.com reviews. Claimed photo lifetimes also vary, with longer lifetimes obviously preferred. As a point of reference, traditional silver-halide color prints last about 20 years when exposed to air.

How Much Speed Do You Need?

Don't worry too much about speed. For photos, quality matters more, and even the slowest printers today offer tolerable print speeds: In our latest round of testing, the worst speed for printing a 4-by-6 was 1 minute 27 seconds. Keep in mind, too, that measured speeds are typically slower than claimed speeds, and (as we note in our reviews where applicable) the speed for any given printer can vary depending on the source you're printing from.

How Much Do You Print?

The usual rule for printers is to find out the printer's monthly duty cycle (the maximum you can print per month) and its recommended duty cycle, and make sure the recommended duty cycle is more than you plan to print. Unfortunately, this is almost impossible with dedicated photo printers.

Most manufacturers don't rate the duty cycle for these printers. That's as inexcusable as a car manufacturer not telling you how often to change your oil, but, for now at least, it's what you have to live with. The rule of thumb for these printers is: If you'll be printing enough so you're concerned about the duty cycle, don't buy a consumer-level dedicated photo printer. Look instead to printers aimed at professional photographers and for use in retail stores. (PCMag.com does not review professional-level dedicated photo printers.)
How Much Does It Cost?

Finally, check the running cost and total cost of ownership. The cost per photo is typically easy to find out for this class of printer, because most manufacturers sell print packs with enough ink and paper for a given number of photos. To get the cost per photo, simply divide the cost of the print pack by the number of photos it'll print. To get the total cost of ownership, multiply the cost per photo by the number of photos you expect to print over the printer's lifetime, and then add the printer's initial cost. This total is the best basis for comparing prices.

Fortunately, there are plenty of good dedicated photo printers for consumers to choose from. Here are a few of our favorites.

Featured in this Roundup

Canon Selphy CP780 Compact Photo Printer ($99.99 direct)

Although the Canon Selphy CP780 Compact Photo Printer is a step below the top tier of dedicated photo printers for photo quality, it's good enough for most casual photographers.

Canon Selphy ES3 ($199.99 direct)

Despite a problem printing diagonal lines (think: spokes on a wheel), the Canon Selphy ES3 is one of the most impressive small-format photo printers on the market.

Dell Wasabi PZ310 Mobile Photo Printer($149 direct)

Only the second printer in the U.S. to use ZINK technology, the Dell Wasabi PZ310 Mobile Photo Printer is small enough to carry with you everywhere.

Epson PictureMate Dash ($99.99 direct)

The Epson PictureMate Dash delivers high-quality 4-by-6 photos at a fast speed and a low cost per photo.

Epson PictureMate Zoom ($199.99 direct)

The Epson PictureMate Zoom archives photos to disc and prints an index sheet for reference. It also prints high-quality 4-by-6-inch photos at warp speed.

HP Photosmart A636 Series Compact Photo Printer ($149.99 direct)

The HP Photosmart A636 Compact Photo Printer is strong on convenience, with a kiosk-like touch screen and effortless installation.

HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center ($249.99 direct)

The HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center is literally a home photo kiosk, with a 7-inch touch screen and no need for connecting to a computer.

Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer ($150 street)

The Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer is strong on gadget appeal, but it's limited to a 2-by-3-inch photo format, and it offers less-than-ideal-photo quality.

Smartparts SP8PRT Digital Picture Frame and Printer ($300 street)

The name says it all: The Smartparts SP8PRT Digital Picture Frame and Printer lets you view pictures on the frame's LCD and print them out as well.

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