Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock Series 3

Pros: Stands up to heavy printing use, nice color, very simple paper and ink installation, very quiet, paper and ink packs are the most widely availible that I've seen for Dye-Sub printers

Cons: paper can get snagged when coming out the back of the printer, installation on comptuer "too simplified" and didn't work by itself,

Summary: I'm a simi-pro photographer and I bought this printer to do print photos on-site at events. My main reason for bying it was the 160 print pack availible at Best Buy (and many other electronic stores). This was the largest package and at the best price. The cost of the printer was competative too. I also trusted the Kodak name for "easy" products. I would probably go with a more sophisticated printer for my own personal use, but for on the road, this is good for me.

I have a fuji finepix 4900 camera and bought the printer only to print from my laptop.

Physical set up of the printer was ok, but with the exception of the fact you only know it's powered on when you first connect the powersupply. After the 'status like check' the printer lights remain black until a print has been sent to the printer.

Driver / software setup was a hassle. I knew about outdated software, so I downloaded directly from Kodak's website and installed (54mb download!). However, after doing all that I couldn't get a response from the printer. the istructions said to uninstall everything and download and reinstall again. Hesitantly I did it to no avail. I talked to tech support and after convicing them that I'd done their steps already, we got to an issue with bi-directional configuration. Once that setting was changed the printer printed just fine from then on.

I printed over 120 photos (almost back to back) that first night of using it and only 2 picures of of the batch had any printer flaws (one small white 'speck' in the the print) Other than that opporation was flawwless.

One gripe howerever is that when you send multiple prints to the printer, and an error happens (out of paper or printer ribbion is empty) then it clears the print que without your knowing it. The status lights indicate the error (you have to read the manual to know what they mean though) but the computer says nothing. I ended up having to have some people wait while 20 other prints came out ahead of theirs becuase of this error. And at a 1.5 minutes per print that was a long wait. My solution was to stop sending more than 2-3 prints at a time to the printer.

I was happy with the software, it automatically copied the pictures off my camera to a drive on my computer. However, it never took the photos off the camera so if I didn't clear the camera myself and reconnected it to the software, I would get double copies of the older files.

The software does live up to it's name "Easy share" and indeed is that. Cropping and other adjustments can be done quickly, but I don't like the default image 'enhancements' and usually turned rejected the software's suggestions. They always seemd to 'wash out' the image rather than enhancing it.

Again, overall I was impressed with the price and consitant quality under the work I gave it. People often remarked how nice the prints were.

If you already like this printer weather you have a compatible camera or not, I say it's worth it.