Last week I told you about a printer you should avoid. This week I need to balance that off and tell you about a printer you should consider buying. It’s not good practice to tell you what not to do, then fail to give you an alternative that you can do.

That said, get yourself an Epson WorkForce 840 printer. For everything that last week’s Dell printer was not, this printer is.

Let’s start with cost. Epson’s suggested price on the 840 is $299.00, higher than your average All-in-One printer but the additional features it offers makes up for that. Make sure you take some time to search the web though, this printer can be found for as low as $185.00. You’ll pay shipping on that price, but will still be well below the $299.00 mark.

This printer is fast and produces great quality prints. The additional features that make is worth the higher price include autoduplexing (2 sided printing), built in wireless networking, support for mobile printing, an autodocument feeder, and ports that make USB and wired network setup easy. Keep in mind that while the printer does come with USB and Ethernet ports, it does not come with cables. That’s an added expense you will have to assume.

For those that hate having to replace the paper in your printer, the WorkForce 840 can hold a whole ream of paper in its paper tray!

The 3.5 inch color LCD makes using the printer easy because Epson has grayed out buttons that aren’t to be used on a particular screen.

If you are in the market for a new All-in-One printer, the WorkForce 840 might just be for you. Head out to a retail store and check it out before you do any online shopping.

If you are in the market for a new inkjet printer, heed this advice . . . Avoid the Dell V715w All-in-One Wireless printer!

Why? For the simple reason that there are far better printers on the market. This printer will leave you nothing but frustrated.

Dell claims this printer to be environmentally friendly because the V715w offers an econo-mode button that allows you to dim the 2.4 inch LCD display and enables the double sided printing feature. I’ll hand it to them on a feature that makes printing on both sides of the paper even easier, but an auto dim on a 2.4 inch LCD screen. How much energy, or money, are we actually saving there? Wouldn’t Dell have been better off putting some of that “econo-mindedness” in to creating a printer that does not go through printer cartridges like Larry King goes through wives.

Conservation of printer cartridges will have a much larger impact on the environment than powering down a LCD screen. Dell, long known as the maker of printers that guzzle printer ink, can add the V715w to their list. This printer uses four individual ink cartridges (black, cyan, magenta, yellow) in both standard and high capacity versions. Dell is well know for offering cartridges in both standard and high capacity. Problem is that they are not publishing page yield on these cartridges, so you have to take their word on which is which. Really want to know how fast these printers go through ink, check out CNET and Amazon’s customer comments.

Dell offers this printer for $149.99, but Lexamark, Epson, and HP all make printers that offer more features than the V715w – at the same price point.

It’s print quality and print speed leave you wanting and it offers little more than the standard print, copy, fax, scan features that we’ve come to expect on all AIO printers. Save yourself some frustration and find a different printer to buy.

Hewlett Packard (HP) has introduced a toner cartridge authentication software aimed at helping toner cartridge users avoid using counterfeit cartridges. As of today, the LaserJet 1000, 2000, and 3000 series are all supported by the counterfeit software, which can be downloaded from the HP web site.

The goal of the software is to detect counterfeit toner cartridges and alert the user that the cartridge is not an original HP brand cartridge. It does so through a smart chip, on the toner cartridge, that communicates with the software when the cartridge is first placed in the printer. The software then communicates the information from the smart chip to an authentication service through the Internet (your computer must be connected to the Internet for the service to work). After validation, you receive a pop up message on your computer monitor telling you if the cartridge is authentic or not. According to HP, the new software has a 100% detection rate for counterfeit cartridges.

Where is the value in this for the consumer? You’ve downloaded the software and put a new cartridge in your printer. You now get a warning message. What are you to do? Hopefully you are able to return the cartridge to the vendor you purchased it from, assuming you were sold the cartridge as a genuine HP cartridge. What this really does is put an additional burden in the cartridge users life.

HP is able to gather more information on counterfeit cartridges, but you are stuck with the counterfeit cartridge and what to do with it. HP is not going to help you because it’s not their cartridge.

Additionally, if you take your genuine HP cartridge out of the printer and then put it back in the printer, the software will warn you that you have just put a used cartridge in your printer. I have even heard reports that the software will not let you continue to use the cartridge.

If you are a user of compatible or remanufactured toner cartridges, this software can also cause some problems for you. The software will warn you about using the cartridge and make make it quite difficult to actually get to use the cartridge. Perhaps this additional feature helps HP make sure you use their cartridges rather than those made by someone else.

I get the purpose of the software, no one wants to get stuck with a product that is sold as one thing (genuine HP toner cartridge) and have it actually be something else (counterfeit HP toner cartridge). But, the software can also create some hassles for the toner cartridge user. Give this some thought before you head out and download the software.