Apple’s idea of simplifying printing for iOS users has not exactly been going great – manufacturers have been slow in rolling out AirPrint to their lines, and it has been primarily focussed on consumer printers. Businesses have been out of luck to get Airprint on enterprise grade network printers, and it seems like the latest office focussed printers still do not get AirPrint.

But luckily there is a pretty easy way to get AirPrint enabled within the home and the business, and it does not cost a cent. Netgear’s new Genie app is primarily a network diagnostic tool, but it also enables Airprint on any printer for which you have drivers installed on your machines. The app is available for PC and Mac, and simply installs a little utility that sits in the background. When you open it up, simply click “AirPrint”, then select which printers you want to enable for AirPrint.


Now connect your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch to the same wifi network, and just like that you can print to those printers. We tried it in a small office environment, and we installed a few printers on the host machine (both network and USB), and AirPrint worked without a hitch.

The only disadvantage is that the utility obviously needs a PC to be installed on, and that PC needs to be on before you print from your iDevice. But, if you work in a small office environment where PCs are always on, it is highly recommended to try out.

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The $129 HP Photosmart 5520 e-All-in-One color inkjet multifunction offers an automatic duplexer and booklet and mulltipage printing. It has a 2.65-inch LCD touchscreen for the navigation buttons. Is also features a dual SD Card/Memory Stick reader for offloading scans and performing direct photo printing.

The Photosmart 5520 has an 80-sheet input tray and the output exits just above that. It has an automatic duplexer that eases two-sided printing chores. However, the Photosmart 5520 isn't suitable for scanning long documents because there isn't an automatic document feeder. Also, it can't accommodate thick items such as books.

The Photosmart 5520's printer driver is easy-to-use. It offers layout option for booklets and multiple pages. It also supports push scanning.



Compared to the Photosmart 5510, the 5520 is a bit slow with 8.8 and 7.9 pages per minute for a monochrome pages on PC and Mac respectively. Photos are printed at 4.1 pages per minute to plain paper and 1.0 pages per minute to glossy paper. Printing on Mac is a bit slower.

Output from the Photosmart 5520 generally looks good when it arrives. Though a tad on the light side, photos have a largely realistic color palette (with a slight pinkish cast) on both plain and glossy photo paper. Text is dark, crisp, and sharp. Scans have a slightly cool temperature but are more than acceptable.

The Photosmart 5520 uses a four-cartridge ink system. The black standard size cartridge lasts for 250 pages, the cyan magenta and yellow last for 300 pages making printing cost a bit cheaper. But for the high-yield "XL" cartridges, it lower the costs more for a colored print with a 750 pages for colored, and 550 pages for black.

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If you're looking for a low-priced color laser printer for your small office, look again: For a mere $150 (as of May 1, 2012), you can obtain high-speed, good-quality color printing with HP's Officejet Pro 8100 ePrinter. This classily-styled color inkjet printer has Wi-Fi, USB, and ethernet, and it can handle up to 1250 pages of printing per month. Most important, its inks are cheaper per page than the toner supplies from any comparably priced color laser.



Setting up the Officejet Pro 8100 on a PC is simple: Insert the CD and follow the prompts. If you're using a Mac that runs Lion (OS X 10.7), however, you'll probably have to surf to HP's website for the latest drivers; the ones on our installation CD didn't support Apple's latest and greatest. You can use OS X's own Add Printer function to find the driver, but HP should bring its installation software up-to-date.

HP adds a nice touch to the Officejet Pro 8100's control panel in the form of a small front LCD for showing ink levels, Wi-Fi status, and when you're out of paper. Onboard buttons are limited to an eject button and toggle buttons for the ePrint cloud-printing feature and for Wi-Fi.

Paper handling on the Officejet Pro 8100 is sufficient for medium-volume printing, with a 250-sheet, bottom-mounted main tray, a 150-sheet output tray directly above it; and automatic duplexing. An optional, $80 250-sheet paper tray (CQ696A) is available for the Officejet Pro 8100; but at this writing, the tray is nearly impossible to find on HP’s website without help.

The Officejet Pro 8100 seems sturdily built, and it's more than likely to outlast its one-year warranty. In addition, HP will sell you a two-year extended service/warranty plan for only $25, which is reassuring. The extended plan supersedes the standard plan, but you can purchase it any time within the first year--so the longer you wait, the longer the total warranty.

Getting your documents printed promptly is no problem for the Officejet Pro 8100. Monochrome pages (mostly text, with a few simple grayscale graphics) exit at a rapid 12.5 pages per minute, while 4-by 6-inch photos print at 4.6 ppm (well above average) to plain paper and 1.2 ppm (average) to glossy photo paper. Full-page photos print to glossy paper at about 0.6 ppm, which is slightly above average.

Output from the Officejet Pro 8100 was generally very good. Text looked sharp, though it tended toward charcoal gray instead of black. Monochrome graphics were attractive and had smooth transitions, though of the same overall charcoal cast. The slightly oversaturated palette in color photos made for warm and friendly nonhuman subjects, but it gave fleshtones an unnaturally ruddy appearance.

The Officejet Pro 8100's ink costs are outstandingly low--especially for the high-yield supplies. The unit ships with special "setup" versions of its standard-capacity cartridges that have extra ink for the initialization process, so you still get basically a full set to use for printing. The standard-capacity cartridges cost you 2.6 cents per black page and 2.9 cents per page (cpp) per color. A four-color page costs a very affordable 11.3 cents. The high-yield XL supplies are even cheaper: 1.6 cents for monochrome pages and 7.3 cents for a four-color page.


Fast and competent, the Officejet Pro 8100 is a more economical choice than a color laser printer. But so are most business-class inkjets. Before committing to anything, you might want to check out the Epson Workforce Pro WP-4020, which is slightly faster than the HP and has a rear feed for thicker media such as photos and envelopes.

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Lady Gaga, Polaroid's new Creative Director, joined the company at CES 2011 to unveil the new Polaroid Grey Label line of products co-designed with Lady Gaga. The singer's fans, or little monsters, will be happy to hear that Lady Gaga's artistic vision is behind the design of the new GL10 Instant Mobile Printer, GL30 Instant Digital Camera and the cool GL20 Camera Glasses.
"I consider myself to be a visionary, not just a songwriter and a singer. I am an artist," said Lady Gaga, Polaroid's Creative Director. "I brought my vision and love of fashion, technology and obsession with the future into all of my work with Polaroid."Polaroid Grey Label Products: