In The Driver's Seat
The printer driver has a number of useful features, although not quite as many as some photo printers. The driver offers two modes: Basic and Advanced. The Basic Mode lets you choose from five basic qualities: Draft, Text, Text & Image, Photo, and Best Photo. You can also set the paper type and size, check the ink levels of your cartridges, and choose three options: PhotoEnhance, Reverse Order (so the last page comes out first), and Print Preview. A button takes you directly to online support, a nice touch. A Show Settings buttons adds a side window that offers an easy-to-read rundown of all your settings.If you choose Advanced mode, you can set a variety of features individually, such as Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation. You can also set the printer for Black Ink only, and invoke features such as Edge Smoothing. The program lets you save your settings in a named file, which is handy if you're using the printer for several different applications. It would have been nice if, like some drivers, this one included a "test picture," so you could see the effect of your changes dynamically, but that's a minor quibble.
The Page Layout tab lets you reduce or enlarge the document, either by page size or percentage. You can also do multi-page printing a nice feature that lets you print a single image on several sheets of paper in order to make a much larger single image. You can also add watermarks (symbols or words that underly the main image, such as Draft or Confidential, and do double-sided printing, where you will be instructed to turn over the paper once the first sides have printed so that you can print on the other sides.
The Maintenance tab lets you align and clean the heads, and run a status monitor, among others.
The product also comes with Film Factory, a photo editing and organizational software package.
Conclusion
The Stylus Photo R200 offers good quality photo printing for a relatively low price, and is a good buy for the amateur or family photographer. Add points if you do a lot of transferring to CD/DVD discs and want to give them a bit of pizzazz.Facts
Price: $99Max. Print Speed: 15ppm
Resolution: 5760 x 1440 dpi (optimized)
Max. Input: 120 Sheets plain paper/20 sheets photo
Max. Paper Size: 8.3 x 23.4 inches
Port: USB 1.1
OS: Windows 98 and later; Mac OS8.6 and later
Dimensions: 18.5 x 19.0 x 11.9 inches
Weight: 11.4 lbs.
