if you place Canon SELPHY CP-740 on it and you can do it fast. The new compact photo printer makes a 4×6-inche picture that Canon claims to last al least 100 years within just a minute! The printer supports direct printing from digital cameras as well as most popular flash card slots. Besides, the printer features 2-inch color LCD display and built-in red-eye correction software.

“This printer is ideal for anyone who hopes to produce long-lasting memories with no hassle. Especially with the popularity of scrapbooks, crafting, and even personalized postcards printed while on vacation, the SELPHY CP740 Compact Photo Printer can make great quality prints and postcards,” said Yuichi Ishizuka, senior vice president and general manager, Consumer Imaging Group, Canon U.S.A.

The printer is expected to be available this fall for estimated selling price of $99.99.

This post may be interesting to you if you own a Canon or Epson inkjet printer and still can’t decide whether to use genuine of compatible inks to print your photos. This post will, probably, make you feel disappointed if own a Canon or Epson inkjet printer and chose compatible inks to capture the moments of your life into paper with compatible inks. This post will make you feel proud of using genuine inks for your Canon or Epson printer.

Let’s get to the point. Allion Test Labs, Inc. a Taiwan-based company that verifies product quality and interoperability of PCs and PC peripherals, has tested color fading of inkjet-printed photos using OEM inks and third-party manufacturer’s inks. Allion was hired to do the test as independent tester and didn’t reveal the relations between test results and the ink manufacturers names. It’s only known that the evaluation was done using two printers: one by Seiko Epson Corp, the other by Canon Inc.

The color fading test was made of three parts:

• how well a photo framed under glass resists to an in-door light
• how fast a photo degrades in the dark (to simulate album conservation)
• how well a photo resistance to gas

In the accelerated gas resistance test a mixture of gases is used to simulate aging of a photo, so that one year of real life can be tested in 72 hours (if you are interested in the actual gas formulations, visit the original news page).

The punchline of the evaluation is this: no remarkable color fading was discovered in print using original printer manufacturers’ genuine ink and paper after an acceleration test that results in aging equivalent to five years. On the opposite, color visibly started to fade in photos printed with refill ink and genuine paper, even in tests resulting in aging equivalent to one year. See that for yourself on the figure below for one brand (the original inscriptions were in Japanese):

As we see, picture printed with geniune inks even in five years is not as faded as the one printed with third-party inks. Almost the same figure for the other:

Once again, it’s clear that original inks are more fade-resistant than compatible ones.

So, folks, if you are keen on printing out Japanese girls on your Canon or Epson inkjet and want them to last the longest, you’d better stick with geniune inks Otherwise, watch for photos fade out over time.

Not so long ago, in December 2006, International Standardization Organization finally gave us, customers, a single standard to estimate cartridge performance and thus the printing costs. Before that, printer manufacturers used various ways to determine how many pages a cartridge would print. It was merely impossible to calculate true sum money spent on cartridges during printer’s lifespan, decisive information for many customers.

The standard was created and accepted by a consortium of printer manufacturers, including such major brand as HP, Canon, Epson and Lexmark. During the test, adopted into standard, both black and color cartridges are run continuously, until each of the cartridges is out of ink, according to printer message.

However, HP said some oversights and time constrictions accepted in the standard hinder a true measurement of cost of ownership. Whitney Loper, writing systems engineer at HP said to PCWorld.co.uk:

“Whilst we welcome the standard as an overall way of regulating the industry and giving consumers information, there are some important aspects that we feel have been left out”

First, during the test printers in general perform better on a continuous run of inks. Besides, doesn’t really reflect how printers are actually used – few pages now, few weeks of idling then – which bring us to the second issue – time limitation. A continuous print test takes only a week, while test in real life printing condition would take indefinite amount of time. Another thing the photo test was performed on glossy paper and didn’t considered absorption rates of other types of paper.

“This is something we have said all along but we have had to compromise with certain aspects of this standard because of the amount of manufacturers and industries taking part,” said Loper.

Since the standard is not likely to be approved before 2008, HP hopes to address some the issues in the next working draft of the standard.