And on the fifth day of Christmas my true love gave to the Home Office Warrior:

Thanks to the kind folks over at Epson, I’ve had this printer for a while, and given my normal dislike for printers, the Epson WorkForce 600 had a lot to prove. As a home office worker, if anything could stop my rampant visits to Kinko’s would be a welcome change. Nothing against Kinko’s… but the coffee there isn’t top notch. I like my own coffee maker at my home office much better.

So how good is the Epson WorkForce 600? I won’t be drinking any more Kinko’s coffee. Let’s start there. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey, looks like LightScribe has come out with an even cooler way to label your disks.

LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling today announced the launch of the LightScribe Design Center, a free resource available on www.lightscribe.com offering more than 400 CD/DVD labeling designs with themes such as weddings, music, gifts, travel, photography and business. Anyone owning a LightScribe-enabled computer or external CD or DVD burner can visit the LightScribe Design Center, explore free designs by theme and immediately create visually striking full disc designs – complete with personalized photos and text.

In addition to offering hundreds of designs free of charge, the LightScribe Design Center has the following CD/DVD labeling resources:

Photo Labeling Center: Customer can combine digital photos with text to create personalized and one-of-a-kind disc designs.

Disc Sleeve Designer: With this easy to use tool, customers create vibrant customized designs for jewel cases and disc sleeves by choosing a background, dragging art, adding text, and printing.

Creative Extras: Customers can design labels with themes that include creative extras like matching mailers and custom cards. Users can create printable mailers in minutes.

Find out more over at LightScribe’s website.

Alongside the already popular Epson NX400 that could print 4×6 borderless (read: full-bleed) prints, Epson has unleashed three other sub-$100 (USD) printers: Epson NX100 at $69.99; Epson NX200 at $79.99 and the Epson NX300 (pictured above) at $89.99. The aforementioned Epson NX400 retails for $99.99.

Epson America Inc. today announced three new sub-$100 ink jet all-in-ones designed to satisfy the printing, scanning, copying, and faxing needs of any busy household. Joining the popular Epson Stylus® NX400, the new Epson Stylus NX300, NX200 and NX100 offer an ideal combination of easy-to-use features, outstanding performance, and creative tools coupled with brilliant results on plain, photo or specialty papers with Epson’s reliable, all-pigment DURABrite® Ultra inks for prints that dry instantly, are smudge and water resistant, and are highlighter-friendly.

“The entry-level Epson Stylus NX series is designed to meet basic printing needs of busy and creative households, especially those looking for products loaded with features to print, scan, copy, and even fax, and that are easy on the wallet,” said Kristi Lanzit Fox, product manager, Consumer Ink Jets, Epson. “All of the products in the Epson Stylus NX series offer more impressive features, superior quality and performance, and an overall better value compared to any of the competitive products at the same price points, including fast print speeds, high quality scanners, and a larger LCD on the Epson NX400.”

The 4-in-1 Epson Stylus NX300 is Epson’s first ever sub-$100 all-in-one with fax and an Auto Document Feeder (ADF), making it an ideal productivity machine for the home. Its fast black draft print speeds and 30-page ADF help consumers easily copy stacks of pages automatically, saving time and increasing efficiency. The Epson NX300’s high-speed faxing includes convenient features, such as individual and 60-number group speed-dial lists, automatic redial, auto answer, and up to 100 pages of fax memory. Additionally, the Epson NX300 includes ABBYY FineReader® OCR software, allowing users to quickly convert printed documents into editable text.

The Epson Stylus NX100 and NX200 all-in-ones deliver crisp documents, vibrant photos, and useful scan and copy capabilities for a wide variety of everyday printing, scanning and copying needs at exceptionally reasonable prices. The Epson NX100 prints up to 26 ppm for black text documents, while the Epson NX200 produces even faster black and color documents at up to 32 ppm. In addition, the Epson NX200 adds card slots and PictBridge compatibility for PC-Free photo printing.

Read more about this new line of printers from the Epson All-In-One Printer website.

Thanks to the kind folks at Dymo, they sent along a Dymo DiscPainter for review. I decided to take my time, get to know the printer, compare it to my other disc labeling hardware like my internal LightScribe drive in PC, Avery Ink Jet disc labels, and of course my all-time favorite disc labeling “tool”… my trusty Sharpie permanent marker that I’ve been using for years.

After over a week of rigorously using the Dymo DiscPainter… I have a new favorite.

Read the rest of this entry »