As the name suggests, the Kodak Personal Picture Maker 200 by Lexmark
is optimised for printing photos. The printer comes with two colour
cartridges (or more precisely, a colour cartridge and a photo
cartridge) and no monochrome cartridge. With the two cartridges
installed, the 200 is a six-colour printer, with light cyan and light
magenta (in the second cartridge) supplementing the standard cyan,
yellow, magenta, and black. The two extra ink colours expand the
gamut of colours the printer can produce and allow a smoother
transition from one colour to another in continuous-tone output,
such as photos.
Photocentric conveniences include slots for SmartMedia and CompactFlash cards, so you can print directly from your digital camera. The built-in 1.5 by 1.1 inch colour LCD on the top panel lets you preview the photos stored in a SmartMedia or CompactFlash card, rotate and crop the photos, add a border, define page size and image size, and then print. The option to print an index -- the equivalent of a contact sheet for chemical film -- is a nice touch.
The manual says you can use the 200 as a general-purpose printer. And indeed, the 200 can print high-quality text, although it prints at notably slow speeds: A double-spaced text page in Microsoft Word took 3 minutes 15 seconds at the default 600-dpi setting. According to Kodak, a faster mode is available with a monochrome cartridge, but the cartridge doesn't come with the printer.
Setting up the 200 is straightforward, involving little more than installing the print cartridges and paper. If you plan to use the printer strictly for printing photos from your digital camera, you needn't connect to a computer. To print from your PC, you can connect by USB cable only.
The 200's output qualifies as true photo quality, but you have to wait for it. On our tests, 8 by 10 inch photos took 10.5 to 11 minutes when printing from a CompactFlash card and nearly 20 minutes when printing from Photoshop. But Kodak claims that its new Color Rich Technology (introduced with the 200), which involves new dyes and Kodak Premium Picture Paper, will translate to an approximate 20-year life for the photo output. In short, the high-quality output is worth waiting for, and you won't have to print replacement pictures for quite a while.
Kodak Personal Picture Maker 200.
Company: Kodak
Ph: 1300 130 674; Fax: 03 9350 2416
Price: AU$699.
Rating: 5 Star
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