I’m a big fan of Epson’s printers, so I was excited to check out the brand new Epson Expression Photo XP-860 Small-in-One printer. It leverages Epson’s MicroPiezo printing technology, and it offers much, much more in a compact, affordable printer. We have a full review on the way, but I wanted to serve up a first look.
I have an Epson multi-function printer/scanner in my home office and use it almost every day. With the new Epson WorkForce DS-40 wireless portable document scanner, your office can be anywhere. The WorkForce DS-40 is just over one pound and, thanks to Wi-Fi connectivity, it lets you scan directly to a PC, Mac or mobile device on the go.
If any old picture is worth a thousand words, how much would a big, bright, crisp picture be worth? That’s the question raised by the Epson Stylus Photo R2000 printer. 13″ wide, it serves up images that pop off the page; while my other printers max out at 8 1/2″X11″, this printer can handle 13″X19″ printer paper with stunning results.
When our buddy Paul Strauss, aka TheAwesomer, told me he just heard a band playing instruments that were all created on 3D-Printers while walking the floor at CES 2014 I was a skeptic. Instruments that were printed? I thought he was pulling my leg. Then I heard them and (cue up the Monkeys…), I’m a Believer.
If you need a small multi-function printer that has a tiny footprint and a budget price, then you will want to check out the Epson XP-410. Good quality prints, WiFi, and printing from iPhones, iPads, and Android devices — thanks to integration with AirPrint and Google Cloud Print — are just the beginning. And it is priced under $100. It may be an increasingly paperless world, but there are still times when you need to print or scan a document. Epson offers a terrific range of multi-function printers at a wide range of prices. My current go-to printer is the…
We recently reviewed Epson’s Expression Premium XP-800 Small-in-One Printer. (Read the review.) I was impressed. Judie and I came back from Aruba having taken a huge number of pictures. Many of them can be seen in this post on “Amazing Aruba“. Some of them are so good that I wanted to print and frame them for my home and office. A good quality photo printer is quite handy for doing just that, and while I could have used the XP-800, this presented a perfect time to test out the XP-800’s big brother the XP-850. The Epson Expression Photo XP-850 Small-In-One…
I haven’t been all too interested in printers for the last year and a half or so. The reason for this is quite simple — I have been making a concerted effort to be as “paperless” as possible. Thanks to my iPhone, iPad and the various apps that are now available for them, there is little I actually NEED to print. And on those rare occasions when I DO need something printed out … I just send an email to my assistant and ask her to print it using her laser printer. The result? I don’t have or need a…
It’s great to have today’s digital cameras, isn’t it? It used to be that we’d take pictures using film, and we’d have to hope that through a magical combination of our equipment’s quality and our picture-taking ability, the results would be worthwhile, because we were going to pay the same price for the good shots as we would for the bad. If you wanted copies of your photos, you had to pay a photo processing company to do them; the price for this could add up quickly! Now we can take all the pictures we want with our phones, digital cameras…
At long last, I have my entire staff using iPads. In addition, after months of planning we have finally set up our school’s iPads for use with the interactive Bar Mitzvah training program I have created. More and more I expect we will see the staff and school iPad being used for a host of different purposes. One of my colleagues did, however, raise a question the other day. “How,” she asked, “do we print from these things if we need to?” It is an EXCELLENT question and, as luck would have it, I had just received a review sample…
As I have moved further and further away from using paper and pen and more and more into eEverything having a good, high-speed scanner has become increasingly important. My Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 is my workhorse. It handles up to 50 sheets of paper at a time and does duplex scanning. When I am “covering” a book to an eVersion (a laborious process that starts with me cutting the binding off of it) this is the tool for the job. The NeatDesk Desktop Scanner (reviewed here) is perfect when I have a few pages or receipts to scan. When I am…
When Apple announced AirPrint for iOS devices, I could almost see Steve Jobs’ point about the “post-PC era”. Being able to print from your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch (newer devices with iOS 4.2 or later) wirelessly sounded great. Indeed, Google’s Cloud Print functionality for their Chrome browsers works in a similar fashion. But then I found out how limited the supported list of printers was. Heck, even those of us with Apple Airport Extreme wireless routers that have attached printers could not use AirPrint: AirPrint only works with a network connection to an AirPrint-capable printer. A printer connected to…
Labels. We get them when we are young. Sometimes we earn them. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes they are flattering. Often they are not. Labels. Once they are there, they are difficult to shake. Oh, wait, this isn’t about that kind of label is it? No, this is about those labels that you print up and then attach to items you want easily identified. For example if you are sorting the various cables that go with the various gadgets you have collected over the years labels help you know what is inside each box without even opening it. Or if you have…
I’m a huge fan of Epson’s printers. I find they work well, offer a huge range of excellent features and are priced competitively. A while back I had the chance to review their Epson Workforce 600 all-in-one printer/fax/copier. I was impressed and continued to use it until my father needed a printer. I gave it to him and he used it until a friend broke it while trying to replace the printer cartridge. (Don’t ask!) When I asked my father what he wanted to replace it he replied, “The exact same one.” That says it all. Over the past few…
Alphasmart NEO Portable Electronic Keyboard It has a full-size keyboard so it is definitely not pocketable and a sports a 5.75″ x 1.5″ Mono Liquid Crystal display which shows a “generous” 2 to 6 lines of type. It has a whopping 512K memory. It runs on 3 AA batteries. It has no ability to connect to the internet. Finally, to get “all this,” you’ll have to pay a little more than half the price of a bargain Netbook. No, you haven’t just accidentally stumbled on a review from the Gear Diary Archives. This amazing little piece of retro tech is…
I have been happily using an Epson all-in-one printer since I reviewed one for the site last year. The printer does everything I need and much more. Best of all it does it quickly and accurately, and it’s relatively easy to use despite the huge number of functions available through it. It is intended for a small office, and so it hasn’t gotten the wear and tear that others might put on it, but over a year later it’s working other than ever. In fact, it fit what my dad needed so I set it up for him when he…
A number of years ago I wanted to begin moving toward having a “paperless” life. I was tired of being swamped by piles of paper. It was getting out of control. The first step in my trying to unclutter my life (it is still “in process”) was to purchase a high-speed scanner. I did a good deal of research and eventually ended up with one of Fujitsu’s products, a ScanSnap scanner. It blew me away. It had the ability to handle up to 40-50 pages at a time. It did two-sided scans. It scanned fast, Created high quality scans and…
We saw a lot of neat stuff at CES last month. One of the most interesting, at least to my mind, was a small hand-held scanner from PlanOn. At just about 9 inches long and a tiny bit thicker than an iPhone, the DocuPen X05 isn’t cheap… but it’s pretty impressive nonetheless. The company sent me a loaner unit, and I’ve been using it for the past week or so. Despite some frustrations when I initially tried to get it set up, I have been more than a bit “wowed” by this little gadget. Let’s take a look.
Back in August, we wrote about the PlanOn Printstik Bluetooth printer for BlackBerry devices. This past week, PlanOn provided a review unit on loan, and allowed me to put it through its paces for several days. Now that the Printstik has been returned, what did I like about it? What could be improved? More importantly, is this an item that should be added to your gear for daily use? Let’s find out…
If you have to send large numbers of snail-mail, a dedicated label printer may be just the thing for you. If you want speed and flexibility in your label printer, then the Dymo 450 Twin Turbo is definitely worth a look. While having a dedicated label printer with two different bays that hold two different sizes and types of labels may sound like overkill, it isn’t. In fact, it makes life even simpler by allowing a degree of flexibility that can save the time of switching from one type of label to another. For example, one side can have address…
The timing could not have been better. Our ancient multifunction printer had seen its last day, and we needed a good printer to replace it since I do much of my writing from my home study and my wife has recently started her own business. I was in the midst of doing the research as to which printer to buy when I was offered the opportunity to review the Epson Workforce 600. As luck would have it, the Workforce 600 was already on my shortlist. I’m glad I said “Yes” to reviewing the WorkForce 600, as this is definitely a…
CD Printing at home has been around for several years now, negating the need for sticky labels that make the disc so thick that it won’t fit in a laptop drive properly. Dymo, famous for their many label-making solutions, have entered the market with the DiscPainter, a stand-alone CD and DVD label printer that prints directly onto blank discs in around 60 seconds. In the box is the DiscPainter, a quick-start guide, registration card, ink cartridge, 3 blank printable discs, AC adapter (110-240V, works anywhere in the world) and surprisingly a USB cord. Seems these days the vital link between…