Personal photo printing has been around for quite some time, except that getting your photos printed out right after you’ve taken them isn’t exactly something you can do without the right equipment. Sure, one can argue that portable photo printers such as Canon’s Selphy ES-series do let you print on the go without having to find a wall socket to plug in for power, but getting one that literally fits into your pocket wasn’t really possible. Until of course, Dell came into the picture with their Wasabi photo printer.

I had the opportunity to bring one around for a while, and while it certainly has its limitations, it turned out to be one heck of a fun printer.

Dell markets the Wasabi primarily around the novelty that is ZINK (short for Zero INK) technology, which basically means that the printer doesn’t actually come with physical ink cartridges. Instead, the color pigments are made in the form of heat-sensitive crystals, which activate when heat is applied. While this means that the photo paper will be proprietary by nature, and that you can’t use any other types of regular paper, the lack of additional moving parts also means that the finished device can be made a whole lot smaller. Plus, not having to replace ink cartridges can be a blessing by itself.

Physically, the Wasabi (or otherwise known to Dell as the PZ310) is pretty small, not that much bigger than my Nokia N82 mobile phone. And given that most of the Wasabi’s made out of plastic, it doesn’t really weigh all that much either; just a smidgen over 200g or so according to the product page on Dell’s website. If its a pocketable photo printer you’re looking for, this one actually does fit the bill. Heck, even the Wasabi’s power adapter is almost as large as the printer itself.

You can send photos over to the Wasabi in two ways: via PictBridge connectivity from a PictBridge-enabled digital camera, or via BlueTooth (either from your mobile device or laptop, for example). Pairing the Wasabi with your mobile phone, for example, is an exercise in simplicity. I managed to test BlueTooth transfers using both my Nokia N82 and my wife’s Nokia E66; both worked flawlessly. Naturally, the main plus point of all this is that you’ll not need any drivers to be able to use the Wasabi, as there’s nothing to actually install in the first place.

Dell’s designed the device to be pretty simple to use, so there’s no plethora of buttons, lights and whatnot to distract you. Aside from the power button, there’s one that makes the Wasabi print multiple copies of any particular image, as well as a latch that opens up the Wasabi for users to load in additional ZINK sheets.

The reprint button is exceedingly handy when printing multiple copies, as the image data is retained in memory even after the print job is done, and the memory cache is only flushed when new image data is received by the Wasabi. That said, you can’t queue multiple print jobs with the Wasabi. Images can only be sent individually, and even then, while the Wasabi is busy printing, it’ll not accept any new print jobs until the print job is complete.

The indicators on the Wasabi are deceptively simple. You get three LEDs, each indicating a smiley face, a sad face and a battery. The smiley lights up during normal operation; a steady glow when waiting for a data signal, and blinking when data is being received. The sad face lights up with something is wrong; running out of media for example. Last but not least, the battery indicator shows the power status; blinking when low on juice, and staying lit when charging.

Dell says that the Wasabi is able to print 15 photos on a full charge. The lithium-ion battery is removable too, so you can easily purchase and tote around spare battery packs in case you need to print more photos during the same session. Recharging the battery takes about an hour and a half; not too shabby.

Each pack of ZINK photo paper comes with 10 sheets worth, including the blue ZINK Smart Sheet you see above, which calibrates the Wasabi’s important print bits for you. Each individual pack of paper comes with this calibration sheet, and Dell stresses that it’s a must to re-calibrate the Wasabi with each fresh pack of paper you load. The paper bay is revealed once you unlatch the transparent plastic cover on the Wasabi.

Printing a single photo takes about 50 seconds, give or take a few; not blindingly fast, but neither is it snail-slow either. The Wasabi does make some noise when printing, but nothing more than a slight whirring can be heard.

If anything, the print quality isn’t anywhere as good as a proper photo printer, as there’s a great deal of grain in the photos. For the Wasabi to produce better prints, you need to ensure that your images were shot with plenty of light. Then again, ZINK technology isn’t exactly mature, we should see higher quality prints as the granularity of the ink crystals gets finer, and as the technology improves over time.

A side benefit of the photo sheets being heat-activated by nature is also that you don’t need to wait for the printout to dry before handling, as they’re already dry from the get go. Also, the ZINK sheets aren’t just photos, they also double up as stickers. The adhesive is pretty strong though, and once stuck on, it’s not easily removed without some mess left behind.

A few things to note; firstly  that the Wasabi automatically crops your printouts to an aspect ratio of 3-inches by 2-inches, which is the size of the ZINK sheets. As such, you’ll have to frame your shots with that limitation in mind, lest a photo of your buddies on an outing end up with someone’s heads cropped off. Secondly, the Wasabi can’t print 15 sheets in one go; it’ll stop after a couple of prints to cool down, which is indicated by the smiley face LED blinking slowly.

The Dell Wasabi comes in three colors: pink, black and blue, and has an online price of S$319 here in Singapore (RM719 back home in Malaysia; and US$149 in the United States). The asking price isn’t exactly cheap for a portable photo printer, but at least Dell makes a habit of running online promotions every other week, so there’s very little chance of you having to pay full price to pick up one of these. The ZINK sheets are priced at S$8.56/RM19/US$20 for 48 sheets on the various Dell country websites.

As a portable photo printer that’s fun to use, the Dell Wasabi certainly fits the bill in more ways than one.The wife took it out to a gathering with friends, to their delight. Most of the ladies were more than willing to overlook the mediocre print quality in favor of the fun factor that the palm-sized printer brought to a girls’ night out. If Dell were looking for validation on the appeal that the Wasabi has, that’s probably the best example I can give you.

Nevertheless, aside from the less-than-optimal print quality, there are a couple of bugbears that we hope Dell will rectify in a future revision of the Wasabi (if any), least of which is the ability to load more than 12 sheets of photo paper at one go. In addition, while having the photos double up as stickers is interesting, it’d be great if Dell could also sell cheaper photo paper *without* the adhesive. Last but not least, the asking price can be a bit of a turn-off, especially since that the Wasabi’s faults are quite significant all by themselves.

For more pictures of the Dell Wasabi, continue scrolling down.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - in perspective

First impressions: the laptop is seriously small, ss you can see in the picture above, with my Nokia N82 placed next to it for some perspective. Then again, netbooks are meant to be small and compact; the Inspiron Mini 9 is no larger than most other netbooks i’ve had the opportunity to check out in recent months.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - wide open

Opening up, you can see that the keyboard is a little cramped; a necessary evil considering the limited space available. The inner aesthetics are simple, to the point of being almost plain. Then again, i’ve never known any Dell Inspiron laptop to ever win awards for being pretty. On the flip side however, build quality is excellent. On this particular unit at least, there were no creaky bits, and the unit felt quite solid overall, unlike the Asus Eee PC for example, which feels a little like a plastic toy.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - the keyboard, close up

Of immediate concern on the keyboard is the first row of keys; touch typists will definitely struggle to get accustomed to the key layout. The directional keys and the rightmost shift key too, are a little too small for comfort, especially for people with fat fingers such as myself.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - shiny

The LCD cover is adorned with a glossy coat of paint. If you look closely you can just about see the flecks of metallic bits. On the outside at least, the Inspiron Mini 9 looks great.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - the left side

On the left side you’ll find a pair of USB 2.0 ports and the card reader slot, as well as the power jack. One thing I do have to point out is that the power connector itself is overly long (large?), in comparison with the overall dimensions of the Inspiron Mini 9. Dell really ought to design something a little more compact that doesn’t lookso out of place.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - the right side

On the right side is the RJ45 jack(10/100 Ethernet only, unfortunately), another USB2.0 port (for a grand total of three), the VGA output jack, exhaust vents as well as the microphone and headphone jacks.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - HSDPA?

Removing the battery, I noticed a mobile SIM card slot, presumably for a unit that was 3G/HSDPA enabled, though the unit pictured doesnt have the necessary 3G/HSDPA hardware installed. This isn’t a new feature on Dell notebooks, mind you, as my Dell XPS M1330 laptop has a similar slot behind the battery, but the laptop also lacks a HSDPA modem.

As I write this however, Dell’s already launched the Inspiron Mini 9 in Singapore; the corresponding product page is located here, which also means you can go buy one for yourself, if you so fancy. Full specifications are listed on that same page as well.

There’s only one problem though.

Time to hotfoot it to your nearest Dell retail outlet.

It’s only available at retail stores, and not online.

Riiight.