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.

Solid ink printing technology has had a tumultuous life.

While HP’s strength in photo printing is once again proved, mono prints take too long and the scanner is poor.

Primera's Bravo is designed to produce large numbers of professional quality CDs on short order: it combines a 40x IDE CD burner and a CD printer, and it also comes with a robotic arm to automate the production process.

Primera's Bravo is designed to produce large numbers of professional quality CDs on short order: it combines a 40x IDE CD burner and a CD printer, and it also comes with a robotic arm to automate the production process.

Printer manufacturers have steadily been increasing the number of ink cartridges in their top of the range photo printers on the basis that the more basic colours they have to work with the more precise the overall result.

Finishing a point above average overall, Canon's PIXMA iP5000 was unlucky to miss out on our coveted recommended award, pipped at the finishing line by Epson's PictureMate small format printer. Canon's five individual ink cartridges is a great system that allows you to replace only the inks you need without needing to replace a whole colour cartridge as is the case with the HP PhotoSmart 8150 printer.

An electronic whiteboard without the whiteboard would probably be the most succinct way to describe the mimio from Virtual Ink.

A great printer for the road with a microscopic footprint, but average performance holds it back from greatness.

Great design, great photos and some clever features, but it struggles to justify the high price.

An excellent all-in-one, particularly when it comes to photo quality, but it’s possible to get more features elsewhere.

Good photo quality and a large touchscreen make this the A4 inkjet to buy.

The best home-office choice with an ADF and fax, plus good text speeds and quality. Those looking for a photo printer should look elsewhere, though.

Solid Ink Colour printer

The HP Officejet Pro 8500 is one of the best office inkjet alternatives for under $350. Being feature packed, small businesses may be tempted to try this over the latest expensive laser printer.

Epson has gone all-out on their digital photo flagship -- it has eliminated all office-centric features to deliver an enthusiast's juggernaut with film scanning, a six colour ink-tank, and plenty of memory card slots.

Painter 7 is a digital painting application that simulates the realistic subtleties of an artist's style using natural media, such as water colours, inks, oil paints, coloured pencils, felt pens, chalks, pastels, and more.

A brilliant performer, particularly in terms of photo image quality. It’s superb value, too.

It has been over two years since we previewed Office XP, but Microsoft has finally given us a glimpse of Office 2003. The finished version should be on the shelves by the end of July, but will it be worth the upgrade? The answer could be an emphatic 'yes' if you're a Tablet PC user, as Microsoft has just launched OneNote (see page 59), making full use of electronic ink. The company is also introducing InfoPath (see page 59) for designing electronic forms, with the flexibility of XML. The classic apps have also had their seen refurbishment, with Outlook (page 56) getting the most attention, and FrontPage and Publisher (page 58) a bit of a revamp.

The Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock 6000 is a tiny photo printer-cum-camera dock for Kodak EasyShare CX/DX 6000 and LS600-series cameras. Although it's designed to print 4 x 6in borderless prints, the dock is capable of a lot more. The abundance of functions this dock can perform boggles the mind. Ranging from slide show streaming, three-hour camera Li-Ion battery charging, multiple print runs and PC file-synching, this printer does it all.