Printing Photos: Unitaskers are Okay
We’ve talked about requirements for home-based printing of digital photos in the past, but with the holidays fast approaching it seemed like a good time to talk about this in more detail. I also just bought an Epson PictureMate 240 “personal photo lab,” which is turning out to be an interesting little machine.
First, I’ll state that I agree with famed hacker chef Alton Brown’s dislike of “unitasker” devices, or those that perform only one specific job. I have PCs that boot multiple operating systems, my main printer is an HP OfficeJet that handles printing, faxing, scanning, and even includes a multiple input memory card reader. My kitchen (yes, I’m also a cook) contains no George Foreman grill or chicken-on-a-spit roasters.
This said, I think I like the idea of a dedicated photo printer.
I first started printing photos about ten years ago, when I bought a small Xerox inkjet that handled both plain paper and glossy photo stock. It died after a few years and I’ve since gone through several more multitasking printers, finally ending up with the HP mentioned above. Allegedly it’ll print photos, but I’ve never managed to get decent output on it no matter what settings I try.
The PictureMate, at $99 (online price), seemed like an interesting toy and I decided to buy one a few weeks ago. It’s a tiny unit that accepts only 4×6″ photo paper - the user is warned never to insert plain stock or it’ll destroy the heads - and uses a single cartridge that holds both black & colored ink. It’s self contained and includes its own card reader as well as a tiny preview screen: you insert a memory stick or card, the printer reads it and shows thumbnail copies of photos on the tiny screen. You then select one or more images and hit “print.” Initial tests seemed very promising, with vibrant colors and dry to the touch prints right out of the feeder. The device can also be connected to a PC via a standard USB port; it then acts as a standard printer with its own set of special properties. As a bonus, when connected to a PC the device’s card reader slots are available via the OS (they appear, like other memory-card devices, as standard removable disks).
So far only one problem has appeared - the device started emitting prints with horizontal black lines across them, and no amount of cleaning or head realignment would resolve the problem. A short phone discussion with Epson produced a promise for a new print cartridge, which corrected the situation immediately.
Epson sells packs that include a single replacement cartridge and 100 sheets of pre-cut 4×6″ glossy or matte finish paper for about $32. That means prints cost about $.32 each, not including the amortized cost of the printer itself. Some photo labs are more expensive, while others charge less. I certainly won’t use this device to print off hundreds of photos at a time, but it’s very nice to have a photo printer at home for special occasions. It may be an evil unitasker, but it’s a useful one and it eliminates the hassle of emptying my HP’s ink by trying to print photos. Just in time for the holidays, too.