The ESP-5 printer has the same simple textured black plastic body design as the ESP3, large 3-inch LCD screen, the perforated scanner cover adds an elegant touch and the smaller footprint that gives the device a flimsy and delicate feel. Kodak’s latest AiO printers use pigment-based inks that improved photo quality over previous model. A PictBridge socket and memorySticks, xD, SD, and compact flash cards slots are provided for direct printing from digital cameras and other devices. The Kodak ESP printer ships with the two separate installation discs for Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista as well as includes  Kodak Inkjet Printer Software Version 2.2 and Kodak Home Center software.The Kodak ESP5 offers the opportunity to edit each individual picture with a variety of one-touch enhancements including color sharpening, red-eye reduction, color restoration, and Kodak’s “Perfect Touch” technology.Inspite of all the Kodak ESP5 is a little inconsistent in terms of its speed and graphics quality still lacks definition.

Features:

* Convenient 2-cartridge, 6-ink system
* Large 3 in. (7.6 cm) color LCD display plus memory card and USB slots
* Intelligent paper sensor
* KODAK EASYSHARE Software image enhancement and editing tools
* KODAK perfect touch technology
* KODAK color restoration
* Red eye correction technology
* Facial retouch
* Fast document scanning and automatic optical character recognition
* High-definition CIS scanner
* BLUETOOTH Wireless Technology enabled
* Crisp, sharp black text documents

  Dell Photo 926  prints up to 20 pages per minute (ppm) in black, 48-bit full color flatbed scanner scans media at up to 1200×2400 optical dpi (19,200 interpolated) and it also provides  built-in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. Dell Photo 926 provide higher flexibility  with the optional Wireless Printer Adapter 3300 (WPA). PictBridge connection for direct printing from your camera and  Dell Ink Management System -  an intelligent software program to look after your  printer’s ink level.

Specifications:

General:

Copier Type:    Digital
Width:    17.4 in
Depth:    12.6 in
Printing Technology:    Ink-jet - Color - Photo printer
Height:    7.2 in
Display:    2 lines
Weight:    11.9 lbs

Printer

Minimum Ink Droplet Size:    3 pl
Ink Cartridge Configuration:    1 color cartridge (cyan, magenta, yellow), 1 photo cartridge (light cyan, light magenta, black)

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Now that’s what we think the Canon Pixma MP610 stands for. It carries over the feature set we liked about the MP600. No less and not much more.

The MP610 relies on the same five-colour ink cartridge system to drive its printing output (two blacks, and one each of cyan, yellow and magenta).

The MP610 is definitely built for the home office. It has duplexing for increased page handling and two media trays, if you are looking to switch between two paper types at the same time.

However, home offices might be miffed if heavy printing is part of their needs as the MP610 does not come with a document feeder.

While they are mostly alike, there are minute differences. The MP610 has a claimed 31ppm monochrome speed over the MP600’s 30ppm. The MP610 also has more nozzles which probably accounts for the slight increase in speed.

The MP610 also has a slightly higher scanning resolution at 4,800 x 9,600ppi compared to the MP600’s 2,400 x 4,800ppi.

Compatible with both Windows and Macintosh systems, this scanner provides an unbeatable solution for any task or project. Rich in quality and versatility, the Epson Perfection 4490 Photo will highlight and optimize every detail. When partnered with an Epson Stylus ink jet printer, it’s a perfect choice for creating brilliant images made to last.

Features:

•      Effortless set-up; wizards make it easy to get started

•     Good bundling of software

•      Third party software is installed ‘a la carte’ — components can be installed or removed separately.

•      Plays well with other third-party software

•      Windows/Mac compatible

There are short-cut buttons on the scanner for ’scan’, ‘copy’ and ‘e-mail’, plus one for ‘photo’. This latter is designed to be used when scanning photographs, which can be done in a ’several at once’ mode, with the scanner automatically identifying and cropping the individual images.

Although priced higher than the rest of the scanners reviewed here, the Canon undoubtedly offers exceptional image scanning quality and is fast too. If you don’t need the slide/negative scanning feature, you can buy a similar model for less money.

Compatible with both Windows and Macintosh, the Epson Perfection 2580 Photo provides the ideal solution for any scanning task. Offering incredible versatility and detail in one affordable solution, it’s the perfect choice for bringing old memories to life.

Epson-scanner weighing just about 2.2 kgs and measuring just 41mm in height, the new Epson Perfection V10 flatbed scanner is the Epson’s slimmest matrix CCD scanner.

Sporting a stylish silver casing, the Epson V10 scanner features optical resolution of 3200dpi at 48-bit color depth.

Using the latest color restoration technology, the Epson V10 scanner offers a enhancement features in the bundled Epson Easy Photo Fix software allowing seamless restoration of faded photographs with a single mouse click.

The Epson Perfection V10 flatbed scanner also incorporates a unique energy-saving mode, which is self-activated after 15 minutes of inactivity. The scanner can be reactivated by tapping on any one of the four direct access buttons or by launching the Epson Scan software.

The UMAX Astra 5600 supports an optical resolution of 1200×2400 dpi and a maximum digitally interpolated resolution of 19200×19200dpi at 48-bit color. The scanning area on the flat bed is of the standard A4 size (8.5”x11.5”).
The scanners give the user hotkeys for Scanning, OCR, Mailing and Printing. There’s also an extra button, whose functionality can be defined by the user.
Since special colors tend to naturally be quite loud, the scanner goes a bit overboard and m]akes the color appear a bit too intense, losing out on the texture details of that area.

The UMAX Astra 5600 is definitely recommended to home users and SOHO users who wouldn’t mind, or would even appreciate that extra flamboyant look to their scans.

Performance ranges from decent to interminable. Scanning a page to PDF takes only about 30 seconds, although it appears about half of that is the time it takes Acrobat to launch. Two slides scanned at the default settings–400 percent scaling and 200 dpi, for an output size of 4×5–takes about a minute. There’s some overhead, however: it takes about 33 seconds for the scanner to warm up. Turning on auto exposure and bumping up to 4,800dpi (maximum optical resolution) at 100 percent scaling increases that to about 3.5 minutes per slide. I tried to pile on the works, including high resolution, dust and scratch removal, and six-channel scanning, but gave up timing when the first slide was only half done after 10 minutes–definitely a turn-it-on-and-go-to-lunch kind of operation. Keep in mind that these are on my oh-so-real-world work system, a 2.4GHz P4 with 1.25GB RAM, via a USB 2.0 connection. Your mileage may vary.

If you intend to digitize large quantities of slides and negatives, or have originals with serious dust and scratches, I’d steer clear of this model; it seems a suboptimal choice for both. For the occasional batches of positives and negatives, and frequent print scans, it’s a good deal for the money.