Who says you ca n’t take it with you ? Not Epson . Its update line of wildly democratic PictureMate portable photograph printing machine all have handgrip , and most of them offer optional battery that allow for you to delight swell - looking prints of exposure ingest at your nephew ’s birthday party right on the position .
Epson has made quite a few modification to its “ personal photo laboratory ” in the last couple of years . The printing machine ’s design is more industrial and boxy , magniloquent , but not as blanket as the original ( ) . Unfortunately , the consensus regarding this designing variety — at least around theMacworldoffice — was less than prosperous .
The cost per mark has dropped from about 29 cents a print to about 25 cent a print , while the number of inks has dropped from six to four . as luck would have it , the prints still look great , still dry in an instant , and are still smudge - proof and waterproof . The PictureMate is also still the dissipated of the heavyset photograph printers that we ’ve tested , let in last class ’s model ( ) . One feature I wish they ’d add is the power to impress larger snapshots , say 5 - by-7 - column inch or panoramic prints like the HP Photosmart A716 ( ) .
you’re able to plug in the PictureMate to your Mac via USB , but most people wo n’t . impress forthwith from your television camera or from your camera ’s photoflash memory bill of fare is much more commodious . If you do prefer to use your Mac , the printing machine plays well with iPhoto , and remembering calling card inserted into the PictureMate will climb on on your Mac ’s desktop for import . You also get a higher closure printing option via the photographic print gadget driver , but unlike in the past , the photos did n’t necessarily wait any better when using this context — but they did take longer to print .
The PictureMate Flash has an unusual feature : a built - in CD burner . This clever addition makes easy study of storing your photos . Pushing the Save clit on the front of the pressman cue you to insert a compact disk and select some or all of the photos from your tv camera or television camera ’s memory card that you ’d wish to save . It will sunburn multiple sessions until your CD is full . It can also read , but not fire to , DVD medium . saucer stick in into the PictureMate are n’t visible on your Mac ’s desktop — the way that memory card are — but CDs burned from the PictureMate will mount and are readable from your Mac ’s optic drive .
One annoying thing I rule during my testing was that when I tried to print multiple photos , the PictureMate had a tendency to either jam or take two sail of theme at a metre , get out some ink on the second sheet , and ruin it .
The PictureMate comes in three spirit : Flash postmortem examination 280 , Snap PM 240 , and Pal PM 200 . The PictureMate Pal has a humble LCD than the others ( two column inch ) and costs $ 150 . The $ 200 PictureMate Snap has a 2.5 - column inch color LCD , faster mark speed , and offers an optional barrage fire pack for $ 50 that we were n’t able to test .
timed trials
Scale = minute : secondment
jury test
Scale = Superior , Very Good , Good , Fair , Poor
specifications
Macworld’s buying advice
Epson ’s PictureMate Flash Prime Minister 280 is n’t stark . Its mark sizes are circumscribed , there were a few newspaper kettle of fish , and the new industrial design pull up stakes some people cold . But , what it does do , it does very well — which is print the best looking 4 - by-6 - column inch borderless photos of all of the portables we ’ve tested , and impress them quicker as well .
[ James Galbraith isMacworld ’s science lab music director . ]
