The > Technology > Circuits > Basics: Printing on the Road: Portable Solutions

T'S not unusual for business travelers to carry a laptop, a BlackBerry or an organizer, but few carry printers. Nonetheless, being on the road doesn't mean you won't need hard copy.

Depending on where you are, getting documents or photographs at a hotel room, a conference room or even in the front seat of a car can be almost as easy as printing them at your home or office. There are a number of options, including portable printers, service bureaus, hotel printers and, for photographs, local drugstores.

Bring Your Own

Portable printers come in two basic flavors: photo and general purpose. Canon, Hewlett-Packard and other companies make specialized portable printers for photographs. Hewlett-Packard's Photosmart 325 Compact Photo Printer (0) does a good job printing 4-by-6-inch photos, but that's all it does. The same is true of Canon's Selphy CP600 (0) and similar photo-only printers from Epson, Kodak and others.

A photo printer could come in handy if you need to print photographs at a conference, a party, a client's office or a hotel room. But if you have time and transportation, you may be better off using a photo kiosk like those popping up at drugstores, Wal-Mart stores and other locations. Most accept standard digital camera memory cards; some take CD's, floppy disks or U.S.B. flash drives.

HP and Canon offer mobile printers that can produce 8½-by-11-inch text documents as well as photos. Both also support an optional adapter for wireless printing from a Bluetooth-enabled PC, organizer or cellphone.

The HP Deskjet 450 weighs 4.6 pounds and is approximately 13 inches wide, 3 inches high and 6.5 inches deep. The top-of-the-line model (0) comes with an internal battery and a Bluetooth card. The printer does a good job with text and supports an optional photo ink cartridge for glossy photos. A Compact Flash card slot makes it possible to print directly from some digital camera memory cards.

Despite its name, the Canon Pixma iP 90 Photo Printer also does an excellent job at printing text on 8½-by-11-inch paper. The printer, which weighs 4 pounds and measures 12.2 inches by 6.9 inches by 2 inches, costs 0, plus 0 for an optional battery and for an optional Bluetooth adapter.

The Front Desk

As with photos, there are ways to print text documents without having to carry your own printer. Many hotels have business centers with laser or inkjet printers. It can sometimes be difficult to connect them to your own laptop or organizer, but there is usually someone there who can help you find a solution.

You may be able to transfer the file on a U.S.B. flash drive. An alternative is to e-mail your document to someone at the business center or the hotel's front desk and ask them to print it.

If the hotel has a PC connected to the Internet and if you have Internet access from your device, an easy solution is to set up a Web-based e-mail account at a free service like Yahoo or Hotmail, and e-mail the document to yourself. You can then log on to your e-mail account at the hotel's computer and print the document.

Hotel computers might not have the software you used to create the document. To avoid such problems, consider pasting the text into the body of an e-mail message or saving the file as standard text.

If formatting is important or if the document is a PowerPoint presentation or an illustration, you can save it as a portable document format, or PDF, file. Macintosh OS X supports creating PDF files without additional software. There are free PDF creation tools for Windows, including CutePDF Writer from Acro Software (www.acrosoftware.com) and pdfMachineWhite from Broadgun Software (www.pdfmachine.com). Adobe offers a number of solutions, including software and a Web-based PDF creation service for a month. Details are at createpdf.adobe.com.

Using the Web

Several companies specialize in helping hotels, airports and other places offer wireless printing for guests and visitors. PrinterOn, for example, provides a printing service at all Hilton Garden Inn and Doubletree Hotels in North America, and at airports including La Guardia Airport in New York. Each location has a unique Web address that travelers can use to route their documents to a printer. Documents are stored in memory in the printer until the guest enters a code to release them.

PrintMe (printme.com), a service of Electronics for Imaging, is a Web-based service that provides access to printers in about 1,800 hotels and other places throughout the world. When you enter your location at the Web site, it finds a connected printer near you. The service works with any Internet-connected device, including e-mail-enabled cellphones and organizers; it does not require drivers or other software.

The company sells the hotel a small keypad device, which is placed near the printer. A user who has routed documents to the printer enters a code to start printing. The cost per page, if any, is determined by the hotel.

FedEx Kinko's, which has 1,200 stores in the United States and 10 other countries, can print documents from a number of sources, including floppies, CD-R's and U.S.B. flash drives. Some stores allow you to plug your laptop directly into the printer. Stores usually charge by the minute for computer rental, plus a charge for each copy printed.

Windows users have the option of downloading software at fedexkinkos.com/fpfk. An application there called File, Print FedEx Kinko's installs a special printer driver that routes your job to any FedEx Kinko's office. You can pick it up there or have the documents delivered by Federal Express. This service can be used for bound or unbound black-and-white or color documents. Prices start at 8 cents a page for short runs, with a minimum.

One advantage to FedEx Kinko's and other remote printing services is that you can route documents before you leave your office, or have a colleague upload them for you to pick up.

This can save shipping charges and space in your luggage if you need multiple copies of large documents.

Some independent copy shops offer printing services, as do many Internet cafes, which are easy to find in cities outside the United States.

The Fax

One time-tested method for obtaining documents while on the road is to fax them to your hotel or to a machine at a copy shop, Internet cafe, shipping store or other location. This is a quick-and-dirty approach: a fax machine will degrade the quality of the print compared with a laser or inkjet printer and, of course, it won't be in color.

Both Windows PC's and Macintoshes come with software for sending a fax through the machine's modem, but you'll need to connect the computer to a standard phone line. For instructions, type "fax" into the Help window.

There are also Internet fax services that you can use if you are connected to a hotel's broadband service or if you are at a WiFi hotspot. Most such services, like eFax (efax.com) and J2 (www.j2.com), allow for incoming faxes and charge a monthly service fee, as well as by the page. Fax1.com has a pay-as-you-go service that costs 12 cents a page in the United States and Britain; different rates apply for other countries.

More Topics:
Epson Black Ink Cartridge ( S020187 ) - BizRate.com
Find Epson Black Ink Cartridge ( S020187 ) at bargain prices. Comparison shop for the lowest prices, check store ratings & read product reviews before you buy.

Epson Ink Cartridges in Printers Carts & Toners at Shopping.com
Find Epson Ink Cartridges stores, compare Epson Ink Cartridges prices. Shopping.com helps shoppers find, compare, and buy anything in just seconds

Epson Ink and Epson Ink Cartridges
... 49 for inkjet printer ink cartridges for Epson printers. ... Epson Printers: Other. Inkjet By Epson Cartridge Number. Bundled Printer Ink Refills: Save more! ...

Epson Supplies at discount prices from FJAProducts.com
... line of compatible Epson ink cartridges and genuine Epson printer inks for all Epson printers at discounted ... 982-9989. Cartridge/Part # : Brand: Model: ...