More inkjet printers and scanners to pick from

Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id

When talking about printers and scanners, we should at least take a look at the products from three major players: Canon, Epson and HP. Specifically in the area of laser printers, we have other names like Brother, Kyocera, Lexmark, Minolta, Xerox and many more in addition to these three dominant players.

Last month, HP launched a few new printers, and we have already looked at them briefly. Last week, Canon launched three new inkjet printers and two flatbed scanners based on the Contact Image Sensor (CIS) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) technologies. One of Canon's new printers had a striking design, which I think has great potential to become a winner.

* Some improvements

In general, however, these new printers from Canon do not incorporate earthshaking technological innovation. I do not know whether this is because there is not much more we can do to improve the existing inkjet printing technology because it is already so mature, or we are still waiting for the R&D division to come up with a different printing technology.

Canon has introduced two direct photo printers for those who want to print quality photos on their desktop. The two printers are the S530D and S830D. The main difference between these two printers is that the S830D uses six different ink colors while the S530D uses four. During the demo, I had my picture taken with a Canon digital camera, and, although no touch-up was done to the photo file, the print made with the S830D was simply indistinguishable from one taken with a film-based camera.

Like HP Photosmart 7550 that we looked at recently, both of these Canon printers also come equipped with a memory card reader. Both of them support Compact Flash, SmartMedia, MemoryStick, PCMCIA Type II (ATA), IBM MicroDrive, SD Card and Multimedia Card. Both can print six by four inch photos all the way to the edges with a maximum resolution of 2400 x 1200 DPI. Both also have built-in the Vivid Photo technology and support Exif Print as well as YCC Color Space to ensure faithful image reproduction. An optional 1.5 inch LCD screen can be attached to the printers to allow us to preview and lay out the photos that we want to print on a single piece of paper.

The US$450 S830D uses special inks that Canon claims to be fade-resistant for 25 years. The speed of this printer is also higher than the $350 S530D. It can print an A4-sized full-color photo in two minutes.

* XNU i320

The highlight of last week's Canon press conference was actually the new, US$ 88 XNU i320 BJ printer. It looks more like a toaster, but a cute one for sure. Canon cleverly chose blue and white to make the appearance of this printer even more attractive.

This space-saver printer fits our desks very well, yet it is also lightweight enough (2.4 kg) to be carried around. Despite its small size and weight, it is quite a capable printer. Also equipped with the Vivid Photo technology and the support for Exif Print and YCC Color Space, it can print with a resolution of 2400 x 1200 DPI. It can even print six by four inch photos with bleed. Priced much lower than the Direct Photo printers, the NXU i320 printer can print 10 pages per minute (ppm) in black and white or 7 ppm in color.

Incidentally, Canon has been doing extremely well in the inkjet and scanner area in Indonesia, particularly in the affordable segment where it has received a seal of confidence from customers. Under the skillful leadership of Datascrip's division manager, Merry Harun, Canon has remained in the top position in the local inkjet market, and its share reportedly grew from 39 percent in 1999 to 55 percent in 2001. During the first half of 2002 Canon managed to grab 68 percent of the local inkjet market, Merry told the press. I would say that, if this affordable XNU lives up to the image of the other popular BJ printers, it will be a hit and will help boost Canon's sales even further.

* Two scanners

Like the printers, the new scanners from Canon, the LiDE 20 and LiDE 30, do not introduce breathtaking innovations. Perhaps the most important new feature is their ability to correct the alignment of the photos that we place on the bed. So for example, if you want to scan two or more photos at the same time, you do not have to carefully place them on the scanning glass. Even if one is tilted to the right and the other to the left, the software has the intelligence to save each of them in a separate image file with the alignment corrected.

Both of these sleek and stylish scanners have specially designed covers that make it easier for us to scan thick documents. Both also use the USB connection, so no separate power supply is needed. Canon has added music playing to the features of the scanners, so we can tell when the scanning process starts and stops by listening to the music that the computer plays. The $90 LiDE 20 scans at the resolution of 600 x 1200 DPI, while the $120 LiDE 30 scans at 1200 x 2400. Both is capable of scanning with 48-bit color depth.

* Standard Required

Canon's Direct Photo printers can print directly from selected Canon digital cameras, including PowerShot S30 and S40 and my favorite Digital IXUS V2 and 330. Similarly, HP Photosmart 7550 can only be connected to an HP digital camera for direct photo printing. It is time the makers of digital cameras and photo printers -- Canon, HP, Nikon, Olympus, Fuji and others -- got together to work out a standard so that, in the future, any digital camera can be connected to any photo printer so that we no longer have to take out the memory card from the camera and insert it into the printer's reader to get our photos printed.