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As the popularity of digital photography continues mushrooming at its astounding rate, there appears to be no shortage of printers coming out of the woodwork these days touting photo printing capabilities. While some models, like the HP Photosmart 7660 ($130; www. hp.com) bring photo printing proficiency to the printer table, others such as Epson's PictureMate ($200; www.epson.com) and this Olympus P-10 Digital Photo Printer are dedicated solely to the task of transforming your digital images into drugstore-style prints.
As part of the ever-mounting line of fashion-conscious Olympus digital photo gadgets, the P-10 certainly looks snazzy. It's a tiny, 7" box that bears a passing resemblance to the bygone Apple G4 Cube, only smaller, covered in a fauxmetallic finish and affixed with a cobalt-colored shield. Through what looks like a tiny porthole on its front face, the P-10 sports a semi see-thru window. While your photos are printing, it lights up like an E-Z Bake oven.
Unlike most of the entrants into the digital photo class that print with some type of inkjet system, the P-10 runs a completely different process with dye-sublimation technology. Rather than building a printed image from millions of tiny droplets of colored ink as an inkjet does, dyesublimation uses rolls of dye-laden film that when heated by the print head, vaporize and transfer the dye onto the photo paper. In theory, the process produces superior prints to those made on an inkjet printer, because the prints have more continuous tones. However, with our tests we concluded that in general, photos from the P-10 tend to look flat and under saturated. Still, they do print quickly. We found that on average, the P-10 could deliver a photo in less than a minute.
Since the P-10 is PictBridge compliant, you can easily connect any digital camera that supports the plug-and-print standard, and start making pictures without ever firing up your Mac. All you need to do is connect your camera to the P-10 with a USB cable. Then flag which pictures you wish to print, and initiate the print command. While most newer digital cameras are PictBridge ready, there are many older models still out there that are not. It's for this reason, and for the sake of saving battery juice, that we wish the P-10 also offered memory card slot options and/or a USB host port for printing from external storage devices.
Setting the P-10 to print from a Mac proved slightly trickier than printing directly from a camera. The bundled driver software does not include Mac support, but Olympus does offer a Mac driver download on its Web site. Installation is a little thorny too. It's not brain surgery, but does require some noodling with the Advanced settings in Print Center to work properly.
As far as money is concerned, the P-10 doesn't give you much bang for your buck. It prints only passable photos. It does so at great speeds, but puts forth very few options. With the P-10 you can only print photos at 3"x5" and 4"x6", and your choices for photo paper are even more limited-- you can only use the paper Olympus bundles with its P-10 ribbon cartridge refill pack. Without a Mac, you can only print from your digital camera, provided it's compatible. When connected to your Mac, the P-10's driver only gives you options for paper size (3"x5" or 4"x6"), adding a clear glossy overcoat and disabling ColorSync. For the price of the P-10, there are any number of inkjet printers that will give far more choices for tweaking and fine-tuning your printed images, as well as ample wiggle room for choosing how you want to print them. Poor Mac support is the final dagger for the P-10's chances with Mac users.
-COLLIN KEEFE
P-10 DIGITAL PHOTO PRINTER: 
Olympus | www.olympusamerica.com | 888-553-4448 | $180
Pros: Dedicated photo printer with ability to print 4"x6" print in 50 seconds.
Cons: No card slots or USB host input, lackluster color representation, limited printing options, minimal Mac support.
Requires: USB port, OS 10.2 or higher
macHOME recommends: PictBridge-compliant digital camera
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