Mobile Printers

Why do you think you need a mobile printer? Why not use a printer at your destination, or at your place of origin, or print stuff off a USB card?

These days, I have my trusty MBP and a smart small Dell (1100) laser printer which is the best printer I have ever had; it did take a while to work out how to make them compatible, as the MBP did not recognise the Dell's driver and had to be persuaded (via Ghostscript) that the Dell is really something else which it can now risk being friendly with.

However, it does no travelling, unlike the MBP. I used to have mobile printers - I had two, in turn, of the old HPs, nice, neat, machines, which were portable, and looked nifty on a desk. They were nice printers, and when they worked, they worked well. However, I have to say that they gave me no end of trouble. They kept breaking down, repairing them always caused difficulty - even when under warranty - as spare parts had to be replaced - and sourcing these grew increasingly difficult as each of the printers has a limited enough life-span. Eventually, I found repairing them constantly, sourcing parts, etc. and constantly nursing them through breakdowns, too much. So, these days, I do mobile computing, but not mobile printing.
Cheers and good luck

 

Mobile printers seriously rock. I have tried non-mobiles, and all-in-ones, and the mobile, a Canon i70, was the best of all. Hey, it got me through college, including printing my dissertation and another big project (both heavy on the pictures as there was a photographic bent to my stuff)--how's that for endorsement? lol. They are so great because not only you can take them around with you, but crucially they are also much, much easier to store and move when you're moving house. Right now, I've got mine stored on top of the stack of printer paper on my ikea Billy shelving unit. No fuss. no muss; now I'm doing lots of stuff and using the dining room table as a desk, I can take it there and put it back at the end of the day when I'm done. In other words, if your main computer is a portable, then it makes sense that your printer should be too.

About the HP ones, I seriously wouldn't recommend anything by them. I bought an all in one from them (the Photosmart series, which is what they have for the home/small biz market), and was really dissatisfied with the level of service. I bought the thing in may 2007 to replace the aforementioned mobile printer which I had given to a friend. Less than a month after the expiration of the one-year warrantee, the thing broke (mechanical problem). When I took it to the service center, I was told this wasn't actually a service center at all, as they did not even look at the machine or take down details of the problem; all they did, they said, was to pack up the thing and send it off to India or Pakistan or some other country full of poor people on whom us westies offload our unwanted gear, and receive a 'refurbished' instead. All this waste for the tidy sum of 94 euros as it was out of warranty--in other words, twice what the equivalent. newer technology machine costs new. So, I would recommend staying away; even though I daresay their prices may look attractive, it may end up costing you more in the longer term.

So now I've got this non-working beast I need to get rid of, and no scanner. I do, however, have a printer, because my friend returned the portable a few months after I bought the HP--after using it herself for a few months. And even though she'd lost the adapter and I had to buy a new one off ebay, the thing still works. All this to say there's another great thing about many portables; they're more expensive, and it seems that they are true to the 'you get what you pay for' adage (or at least the ones made in 2003 were; that's when I got mine).

I would recommend the current version of my own printer, which would be the Canon iP100. Unlike mine, this one includes an optional bluetooth dongle that lets you connect this little guy to a computer and print wirelessly. I can't say how well this works since mine was the last one not to have this feature (boo hiss), but it sure makes me drool!

Anyway, I think it's a great idea! I'm not buying another desktop or all-in-one, and will be replacing this old portable with a new one when it finally claps out on me.

heh, that really made me larf