Digital Camera Fiend - A Camera Review

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superprinter!

After investing $1.4 billion over the last five years, HP has come out with the Photosmart 8250 printer. With 3,900 ink jets, this printer shoots out brilliant photos in just 14 seconds (for a 4″x6″ print). It’s supposedly the fastest photo printer in the world. It beat a top Canon printer by 30 seconds when printing an 8 1/2 x 11 photo when NY Times technology writer David Pogue put it to an informal test.
Other cool features: you don’t need a computer–put your memory card right into the printer and flip through your photos on a 2 1/2 inch screen on the printer. The 8250 also has the ability to read bar codes on the back of photo paper which tell the printer what size paper is being used and also if the paper is correctly loaded. This bar code paper, however, could start to fade in just one year compared to other photo paper which lasts more than a century.

The printer retails for as cheap as $80.