Epson printers go colour mad

Epson is launching a cut-priced colour inkjet printer, the Stylus Colour 200, for #189.

The Stylus Colour 200, which replaces the Stylus Colour IIs, features Epson's Piezo printhead technology. According to the printer manufacturer, this technology is cheaper than thermal inkjet printers as the Piezo printhead lasts as long as the printer.

Other features include a Status monitor, which shows ink levels, and Windows 95 ICM, which tries to ensure the colour on the monitor is the same as that produced by the printer. An Epson 'auto-colour' driver automatically selects the best settings for images imported from either a video or digital camera.

Maria Florey, Epson group product manager for consumer products, said: 'This is the ideal low-cost printing solution for users that want both mono and colour output capability. We expect to take further significant market share with this product.'

In addition, Epson is launching the GT-9500, a 36-bit colour flatbed scanner which can recognise 68 billion colours and scan up to 4800dpi.

The GT-9500 uses a white fluorescent lamp which Epson claims gives faster scanning speeds. The scanner is bundled with Adobe Photoshop, Xerox Textbridge OCR and Presto Pagemanager scanning operating system. It costs #749.

Printer and fax vendor Oki Systems is releasing the Okipage 16n, a network printer targeted at the workgroup sector. The Okiview bi-directional network management software enables users to remotely configure and control printers on the network. It operates at 16ppm and features 600dpi.