Portability has been talked about a lot recently, and people are starting to get used to the fact that their printer can be just as portable as the rest of their equipment. Canon has been offering portable laptop printers for several years and selling just enough of them to persevere, however, with the digital camera boom they are starting to come into their own.

If you had asked me a few weeks ago what the advantages of eight megapixels (MP) were over five, I would have said very few. However, that was before I discovered the fun factor in being able to play with an image that is up to 115cm by just over 86cm (72dpi).

Once upon a time not too long ago, your average inkjet printer had a single tricolour ink cartridge. Of course, the print quality was fairly ordinary, but it did the job. Today, with digital cameras the norm and home users wanting to print their own photographs, your photo printer may have as many as eight different ink cartridges.

Canon's new 600i series of digital video cameras doesn't offer any major changes to the 500i series, just a continuing improvement in quality and a few nice extras. The cameras still look the same and are just as easy to use, but the new top of the range 650i is about as good as you are going to get in its price range.

There is nothing new about digital video cameras being able to take still photos, or digital still cameras being able to take video clips. However, in the past the results have been very ordinary - stills taken on a video camera were usually 640 x 480 snaps suitable for the Web, and little else.