Stories by: Paul Jasper

The Canon Pixma MP530's solid combination of features makes it ideal for a small office that works with documents and photos. Priced at just US$200 (as of June 6, 2007), it handles faxing, scanning, copying, and printing. Nevertheless, it lacks a few features that you might expect to find on an office-oriented multifunction printer.

The compact black Lexmark E240n has the same angular design as the company's E232 and E330 models. This unit adds networking through its built-in Ethernet port. Like the older printers, the E240n has the same simple two-button, five-LED control panel, so there's no LCD-based menu system for entering the network settings, but installation turned out to be surprisingly quick and simple.

With its smooth, white finish, the Ricoh Aficio BP20N looks classy. It's a little pricey for a small office laser, but it's easy to use and produces sharp-looking text. Its minimalist control panel consists of a single cancel button and two lights.

You don't need to edit and print your photos on a PC: Sony's new DPP-FP50 Digital Photo Printer lets you do the work on a TV. The new dye-sublimation snapshot printer also permits you to print your images directly from a memory card or from a PictBridge-compatible digital camera.

The Canon Pixma iP4200 prints high-quality glossy photos quickly, but it's just as well suited for printing office documents with its strong black text, double-sided printing and dual paper trays. In our tests, it printed documents at breakneck speed but the quality of its plain-paper output barely improved on that of its predecessor, the iP4000.

At first look, the Lexmark E330 resembles the E232. It has the same black case and angular styling (reminding us of Darth Vader's mask) but it's faster than its predecessor and costs less to run.