Yesterday Kodak announced the ESP 7 and ESP 9, the two new wireless inkjet multifunctions. Kodak claims these multifunctions can print up to twice as many photos and documents for the money they cost. This feature saves around $110 a year on ink compared with other leading consumer inkjet printers on the market.

Both the ESP 7 and ESP 9 use Kodak’s pigmented inks that come in a simple two-cartridge setup: a black cartridge for $9.99 and a five-ink color cartridge for $14.99. Based on independent testing by Wilhelm Imaging Research, prints from the two printers should last for at least 120 years in dark storage such as in an album.

The ESP 7 All-in-One Printer costs $199.99 and bolsters a 3-inch color LCD display as well as memory card and USB slots so you can view, edit and print images without use of computer. The ESP 7 supports Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity and can perform double-sided printing with built-in duplex unit. According to Kodak, it takes only 28 second to produce a 4×6-inch photo on the ESP 7. When it comes for document printing, the device speed reaches up to 32 pages per minute in black and 30 ppm in color.

The senior model, Kodak ESP 9 priced at $299.99, offers larger functionality: it has fax capabilities, an auto-document feeder, and a 10-inch one-touch control panel.

Kodak’s Home Center Software includes facial retouch capabilities that enable consumers to enhance their personal photographs by automatically reducing blemishes and augmenting facial features. Both printers have an intelligent paper tray system, which automatically adjusts settings based on paper type, size, and amount.

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The SCX-4300 has a neat footprint for an office all-in-one machine, a little wider than a typical personal laser printer, but with very similar depth and height. The sides of the machine flare slightly at the top to accommodate the A4 scanner mechanism which, unlike the SCX-4500’s, sits across the laser engine from left to right, rather than from front to back.

The software supplied with the machine is Samsung’s standard coupling of its SmarThru 4 and Dr. Printer utilities. The first deals with scanning, copying and printing, as well as sharing images, while the second is a diagnostic website. The driver itself handles watermarks, overlays and various print quality settings, laid out in a logical and easy-to-navigate panel.

The SCX-4300 is quite a nippy little printer, completing our five-page text document in just 30 seconds, or 10 ppm. The text and graphics pages (five of them again) are even quicker at 11.54 ppm and when we printed our 20-page document, it took 1:21, increasing the speed again to 14.81 ppm. Samsung’s claimed top speed is 18 ppm, so for a printer maker that’s almost obscenely accurate.

A single page photocopy finished in 11 seconds, so you could get six or so pages per minute from the machine and a 6 x 4 in. photo took little more, at 13 seconds. Both these speeds are impressive, particularly for a machine being sold at around $200 - less minus delivery.

Print quality in most areas is good. Although the maximum resolution of the machine is just 600dpi, there’s little visible sign of jagged diagonals or curves in text. When you add greyscale graphics, the quality isn’t quite so good, with some striping apparent and not many visible grey shades.

The SCX-4300 uses an integrated drum and toner cartridge, capable of printing 2,000 ISO pages. With a typical cost of just under $80, this gives a cost per page of 5.4 cents including paper costs. This is a fairly typical cost for a mono laser device and for black print from a colour one, too, so you’re not paying extra because of the comparatively low purchase price of the all-in-one itself.

This is a good, straightforward multifunction printer which would be very at home in a typical SOHO environment. It’s quite quick, produces good text and passable graphics, though copies of graphics, particularly of grayscale shades, can be very patchy. Running costs are reasonable and if your budget is tight this looks like a good way of providing yourself with the main office print, scan and copy functions at reasonable cost.

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The X9575 is the flagman ship of Lexmark’s Professional series of inkjet multifunctions designed to serve business needs. (The unit has a range of connection options and a number of PC-less features that make it a suitable addition to the home or small office. However, the printing speeds and photo quality leave a bit to be desired.)

The X9575 is rich in connectivity options: you can connect it using USB, Ethernet and 802.11g Wi-Fi.

The front control panel of the multifunction features a color LCD for previewing photos and navigating the menu. Next to the display is a PictBridge port for direct printing and a multi-card reader. The printer has an automatic duplexing feature, allowing businesses to save money through double-sided printing.

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Last Friday Brother introduced its new multifunctional inkjet printer — the MFC-6490CW.

This printer is the first in a new line of “Professional Series” printers. It is also first Brother’s color inkjet to print, copy, scan, and fax on 11 x 17-inch tabloid sized paper.

The MFC-6490CW can print at speeds of up to 35 ppm in black, 28 ppm in color at up to 600 x 1200-dpi resolution. When copying, you can achieve speed of up to 23 copies per minute in black, 20 in color. The scanning unit supports resolutions up to 19200 dpi

The printer uses 4 separate color ink cartridges for imaging.

The Brother MFC-6490CW is well-equipped: it has a 50 sheet Automatic Document Feeder, dual paper trays that can hold up to 400 sheets, and Super G3 33.6Kbps fax modem.

You can connect this printer via USB 2.0, but it also supports Ethernet and 802.11g-compatible Wi-Fi connectivity.

The MFC-6490CW has a built-in 3.3-inch widescreen display and allows for direct photo printing from digital camera media cards, USB flash drives or PictBridge-enabled cameras.

The printer is TWAIN-compliant and compatible with Mac OS X 10.2.4 or later. The bundled software includes Presto PageManager OCR.

The printer is available at an estimated street price of $299.

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Samsung Electronics America, Inc., launches CLX-6240FX, a multifunction printer to expand the company’s lineup of mid range color MFP for office workgroup. The CLX- 6240FX is 4-in-1 MFP with built-in print, copy, scan and fax capabilities, and a maximum monthly duty cycle of 80,000 pages per month and standard paper capacity of 850 sheets.

The CLX- 6240FX delivers color documents at the speed of up to 25 PPM. The standard features include a legal size platen, auto duplex printing and copy and an 80GB hard drive.

Samsung CLX- 6240FX’s color CCD scanner has a high resolution up to 4800×4800 dpi. Among scanning features of this MFP you will find scan-to-network and scan-to-anywhere support for PDF, TIFF and JPEG files. The FRP also supports a Direct USB Interface for scanning to or printing from any standard USB drive. Scanning management tools include full Lightweight Directory Access Protocol support for effective networking and secure document management tools.

The CLX-6240FX MFP base unit is priced at $2,399 and can be purchased through Samsung’s authorized channel partners.

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Xerox launched five new products in the laser printer and MFPs to extend its already broad line of document imaging solutions for the midsize and small businesses.

The Phaser 3100 MFP is the Xerox’s low-end new solutions with speeds of up to 21 pages-per-minute and such features as scan to e-mail, a full keyboard for the fax directory and Optical Character Recognition software to convert scanned documents into searchable files.

Individual users and small work groups may take advantage of Xerox’s Phaser 3250 laser printer. The device features double-sided printing and can print up to 30 pages-per-minute.

Next laser printer, the Phaser 3600 can print at speeds of up to 40 ppm and is provided with a standard one-year warranty that can be extended to three years. With advanced security features and Xerox CentreWare Internet Service technology, the Phaser fits workgroups best.

The Phaser 5500 is the top printer in this Xerox’s release. Designed mostly for larger workgroups, the printer has the PhaserSmart online troubleshooting tool and printing speeds of up to 50 pages-per-minute. The Phaser 5500 can bolster the ability to produce double- or single-sided tabloid-sized printouts.

Last in the release, the Phaser 2625 multifunction printer can speeds up to 35 ppm and includes security options like image overwriting, encryption and authentication tools.

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We continue to acquaint our readers with printer reviews worth of note. What fell victim of an inquiring reviewer’s mind today? It’s Epson Stylus Photo RX595 all-in-one photo printer.

Claire Strodtbeck at TheGadgeteer.com gave the printer a hard time examining it. This examination resulted in one of the most in-depth reviews we’ve ever came across.

So, Clair starts with checking out the content of the printer box:

Among other thing, she mentions that printer package does contains a CD with drivers (a rare sight, according to Clair) and does not include a USB cable (an awfully common sight, as we all know.) Good thing is, there is an extra set of high-capacity ink cartridges included.

Next come technical specifications, that is what the printer can do. From them we gather that the device can print (on paper and discs), copy (without a computer), scan and room a cat. Yes, room a cat, if you place a dish-towel onto printer.

Drawing a conclusion Claire Strodtbeck says that the Epson RX595 All-In-One Photo Printer “is an impressive piece of equipment. It makes a great all-purpose print center for crafts, photos, documents, and all things graphical.”

But the vary interesting of the details (these are what we need the most, right?) on getting the printer ready, how it performed in printing, copying and scanning, and additional information on printers’ special functions you will learn from the vary Epson Stylus Photo RX595 review.

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