For a little over pound;150 schools can now produce colour prints that, until recently, would only have been possible via expensive professional equipment. Today’s printers combine high resolution with six-ink printing to produce photo-quality images at very low cost. During the past year we have seen substantial increases in quality and drops in price of colour inkjet printers which is a good thing given that both digital cameras and scanners are so cheap now. We all look to a cost effective means of obtaining hard copy.

In the last year or so all the major inkjet manufacturers have been falling over themselves to develop new printers that concentrate specifically on the quality of their photographic output.

From a standard resolution of 300dpi or 360dpi, we now have inkjet printers that boast resolutions as high as 2800dpi - higher than most laser printers. As such, prices for inkjet printers have also dropped dramatically. Another important change in inkjet printer development is how easy they are to use.

Most printer manufacturers have produced intelligent drivers that are capable of detecting the type of document being sent to them by the host PC and automatically adjusting their output settings for text, business graphics or photographic images. In terms of quality, reliability and cost, three companies continue to dominate: Canon, Epson and Hewlett-Packard. They each continue to roll out new products on a regular basis most of which can be described as ‘photographic’ printers. If anything, the choice today is harder for schools than ever before: not only do you have to choose among manufacturers, you also have to choose among similar products from individual manufacturers. However, here are three I have picked out which would grace any network room or standalone in school:

* Canon S630

* EPSON Stylus Photo 895

* HP Deskjet 980cxi

The Canon S630 is lightning fast, capable of up to 17 pages per minute in mono and 12 pages per minute in colour. It combines efficient paper handling and high quality output reaching a true true 2400 x 1200 dpi resolution means that up to 2.88 million dots of ink per square inch are fired onto the paper accurately and consistently with quite unbelievable results. For schools however, it’s the separate, individually replaceable ink tanks for each colour that should appeal. Individual colour tanks allow you to replace individual ink reservoirs as they become completely empty instead of replacing combined colour ink cartridges that may still contain ink.

The Epson Stylus Photo 895 removes the PC as middleman between camera and printer thanks to digital camera memory cards support. Plug in your camera’s memory card and print! It also offers 2880 dpi resolution resulting in sharp text, graphics and photo images. This printer has improved edge-to-edge printing now means that photos can be printed with no surrounding white space on standard 4“x6” and A4 paper, meaning that special oversized paper and cropping are unnecessary. For panoramic prints, a roll holder is also supplied that can take 100mm and 210mm wide roll media. The SP 895 also features Epson’s advanced six-colour printing that produces true photographic reproduction with a print speed of up to 7.6ppm black text and 7.8ppm for colour prints. The Stylus Photo 895 is a superb mid-range machine for graphics and photos.

The HP Deskjet 980cxi offers a high capacity standard paper input tray able to hold 150 A4 sheets. Print speed is a respectable 12ppm in draft mode for black and 10ppm for colour. Normal mode reduces these to 6.5ppm and 5ppm, respectively. The DeskJet 980cxi offers excellent output, deep black print, impressive overall performance, features and quality. The DeskJet 980cxi is a superb printer that produces high quality output with very good text capabilities on a range of media - an excellent all-rounder.

The HP Deskjet 980cxi and the Canon S630 offer the best all-round performance for classroom use. However, for a dedicated photo printing it is hard fault the prints that come from the Epson Stylus Photo 895.

Canon S360

Price: pound;146

www.canon.co.uk

Epson Stylus Photo 895

Price: pound;169 www.epson.co.uk

HP Deskjet 980cxi

Price: pound;199 from Hewlett-Packard

www.hp.comuk