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.

The end of 2009 is less than a two weeks away, and it’s only been a few short months since mobile computing enthusiasts were treated to the first netbooks making their way to retail shelves, with the likes of the early Asus Eee PCs and HP’s short-lived but strangely popular Mini-Note 2133 powered by Intel Celeron and VIA C7-series processors. Today, we’re already seeing a throng of netbooks in various shapes, sizes and colors available to buy, such as the Lenovo IdeaPad S10.

Lenovo may be a little later to market than most of the other laptop makers also keen to grab a slice of the netbook pie, but at the very least they’ve managed to produce a respectable product that also happens to be one of the better netbooks we’ve had the chance to play with so far.

Full write-up and oodles of pictures, all after the break.

From the Outside

From the outside, Lenovo’s gone for the minimalist look. No funny, shiny, chrome bits here folks, all you get is what I can only describe as having all the non-fingerprint-attracting properties of a matte layer of paint, while retaining a smattering of shiny and sparkly flecks. At least from the outside, it doesn’t look like the cheap toy that the Asus Eee PC has the unfortunate luck of resembling. Of course, white isn’t the only color that the S10 comes in, as you can also pick up one that’s pink, black or even red. Lenovo also claims other new colors to be forthcoming.

Inside the particular unit i’ve been fiddling with however, it’s plain white all around. You can also see that Lenovo’s also gone for the same minimalist approach on the inside. I particularly like how the stickers that seem to be a permanent fixture on many a notebook’s write rests these days, don’t make their appearance on the S10. All you get are stickers from Intel and Microsoft.

The 10.2″ screen is merely so-so, with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels. Most other netbooks feature a glossy LCD panel, which means that while colors do look better, using them under direct sunlight is going to be a major pain in the ass. Even inside, your reflection is pretty obvious, and it can get more than a little annoying to have to keep focusing your vision past your reflection and on to what’s supposed to be displayed on-screen. The S10 however, scores a major plus point here by having a matte screen instead. Colors don’t look so good, but its a heck of a lot more usable. Also, the display comes with LED backlighting, which is almost a standard feature in just about every netbook these days.

The picture above should give you a pretty good idea of just how big the keyboard on the S10 is. Admittedly, I have fat fingers, which gave me some serious trouble on the S10’s keyboard. While still quite usable (given some practice) for your everyday two-fingered typist (like me), those who are able to use all 10 fingers on both hands might need to spend some time adapting. More than likely, users of the female persuasion won’t find much trouble typing out emails, instant messages and so on; such is the advantage that slim and pointy fingers bring to the table. Size aside however, the keys on the S10 provide a reasonably amount of tactile feedback, with just a bit of flexing noticed when typing with some force. This isn’t the best netbook keyboard i’ve used thus far (the honor still goes to the HP Mini 2133 I previously owned), but it does what you need it to do with reasonable verve.

As for the touchpad, while it’s reasonably sensitive and smooth, its a little small for my taste. I spent most of my time on the S10 using a USB mouse, and only reverting to the touchpad when the situation didn’t accommodate for pulling out a mouse; such as doing some web surfing over HSDPA on a Nokia N82 tethered to the S10 via Bluetooth. Then again, given the rather obvious limitations imposed by the overall small size, you aren’t exactly presented with a choice in the matter. On the other hand, the touchpad on the S10 supports multi-touch functionality, so if you’re into fingering your laptop every so often, this just might be the deal-deciding factor.

Imagine you’re a traveling salesman, and you’re finding it a little more than inconvenient to be pulling out your laptop for a presentation, only to discover that you can only handle so many people at one go at the local Starbucks, before they point out they can’t see what’s on the screen, or that the table’s a little too small to be crowding around.

Times like that, gadgets like the 3M MPro110 Pocket Projector could come in great handy. Battery operated, built using LCoS technology, fits into the palm of your hand; this is literally the smallest projector i’ve seen yet.

Quite recently made available on the sunny shores of Singapore, I had an opportunity to take the MPro110 out for a spin a day or two back, and here’s my take. A word of warning though, a great number of pictures lie waiting after the break.

Up Close and Personal

Side by side with my Nokia N82, it’s immediately clear just how small the MPro110 is.  With dimensions of approximately 114mm x 51mm x 114mm, its just slightly wider than the mobile phone, as well as being nearly as thick.

Tipping the scales at just 140g, its also quite light, literally a projector you can shove in the back pocket of your jeans. The MPro110 is made of plastic all around, which explains the weight. That said however, being made of plastic doesn’t mean you can throw it around and neither should you sit on it; i doubt the chassis can take much punishment.

Turning the unit on is almost instantaneous – there’s no warmup time required, great for when you’re in a hurry and need to get the projector up and running in a matter of seconds. For some reason though, the composite video and VGA inputs use different connectors for each.

This little dial lets you adjust the focus of the projected image. It’s a little stiff, but works as it should. That’s the only physical control on the MPro110 though, you don’t get anything else. No brightness adjustments, no pincushion correction, etc; zilch.