Dell's Photo All-in-One Printer A922 is an low-priced colour inkjet multifunction with a flatbed scanner that is based upon the Lexmark X5270. While Dell lists the A922's print rate at a quick 19 pages per minute (ppm) in monochrome as well as a fast 14ppm in colour, it turned out to be among the slowest printing, though swiftest scanning multifunction inkjets we have tested. For low cost and good quality flatbed scanning, copying and image-manipulation tools, the Photo All-in-One Printer A922 is a fantastic option. On the other hand, if you want rapid printing and/or advanced fax options, you will be best searching elsewhere.With Dell's hallmark colours, the Photo All-in-One Printer A922 includes a wide, silver top which has a black base and paper trays. It's practical, rather than beautiful. At 9 lbs, the light Dell A922 is nevertheless a little over-sized for a multifunction in its group, measuring 43.7cm wide by 32.3cm deep by 16.8cm high. Because extending the paper t rays increases the Dell A922's height and depth by almost 13cm, this is not really a machine created with limited room in mind. A small user interface that has a two-line LCD is on the top right. Whilst this is a photo-quality multifunction printer, Dell does not incorporate media-card slots or direct camera-to-printer ports - a huge omission. Only one USB 2. port (cable not provided) is placed on the rear of the unit together with the power-cord connector, and irrespective of its shortage of a network interface, the printer can perform in a peer-to-peer network. The Dell A922 also features high-yield black and colour inkjet cartridges. An optional photo cartridge can be bought on its own. The multifunction printer's 8MB of Random access memory is not may be upgraded. The Dell A922's input tray, positioned in the back of the unit, contains 100 sheets, while the output tray that extends from the front supports 50 sheets - very standard for an budget multifunction piece of equ ipment but inappropriate for some smaller businesses. The small control panel at the top right consists of a single button to copy and one to scan, as well as a small, amber error light, in addition to a menu button to manually set the print quality together with other things. Information appears on a small Liquid crystal display above the buttons, however the display can be tough to read mainly because it is set back at an awkward angle and is not backlit. It's normally a lot easier to adjust options through the software than on the control panel. The Dell A922 is restricted to Windows 2000 or XP operating systems, and it isn't suitable for Macs. Installation is easy with the enclosed setup sheet and CD.The Photo All-in-One Printer A922 is mainly made for printing, copying and scanning, providing only light fax abilities. Given that the printer is made around a Lexmark engine, quite a lot of its functions (and its software) will be familiar to Lexmark owners, for instance N -up printing, which allows multiple images to print on one page; borderless photo printing; along with poster, booklet and greeting card options. The default pop-up display that shows up while printing could be of-putting, even though its ink level reminders are useful. Sad to say, the print speed is fairly slow.The Dell A922 is a reliable stand alone copier for situations where you will need a fast copy and don't wish to fire-up your computer. It can turn out as many as 99 copies at a time, providing numerous speed and print-quality options for increased convenience. Most notable, however, is the preview feature - to be found from the All-in-One Center software - that lets you scan, fax, copy, modify photos as well as conduct other work from your PC desktop. A preview option allows you to crop a document, if needed.As a scanner, the Dell A922 will import text and images directly to file, fax or email. It employs Microsoft email applications (like Outlook) or non-Microsoft c lients (for example Eudora) simply by adding them to the list of default destination options within the All-In-One Center software. A wide range of additional software packages are also included.Unfortunately, the Dell A922 does not offer PC-free fax features for those situations when you don't wish to fire up the PC. To fax, the Dell A922 depends on Microsoft software and the modem on your computer, thus its only fax add-on is its ability to include scans.While ink expenditures may rise with an inkjet, the high capacity ink cartridges for the Dell A922 offer affordable colour ink and somewhat more costly black ink. High-yield black-ink cartridge produces 638 pages whilst the high-yield tricolour-ink cartridge produces 561 pages. The less expensive standard black-ink cartridges aren't any bargain, producing only 298 pages, and roughly the same with the tricolour cartridge, which produces 237 pages. You can also get a photo cartridge that can produce approximately 118 4in. by 6in. prints.Given that Dell's printers (and Lexmark's) are renowned for their extremely good print rate and not-so-great print quality, the Photo All-in-One Printer A922 is brimming with surprises. First of all, the Dell A922 prints black and white text and graphics particularly slowly - in fact, it's among the slowest-printing multifunction inkjet printers we've looked at. In our tests, it averaged 1.7 pages per minute (ppm) for text and 2ppm for photos. Conversely, we were impressed by the print quality. Both text and graphics examples exhibited fantastic detail - among the sharpest we have seen from an inkjet printer. The photo printout was also finely detailed, although colour tone was just a bit yellowish when compared to the original. However, it was among the finest photos ever produced by a Dell or Lexmark inkjet which we've testedBy contrast to its slow printing, the Dell A922 scanned swiftly. At 7.1ppm for greyscale and 5.2ppm for colour, it was in reality the qui ckest-scanning multifunction printer we've tested. Regardless of this, the printer's copy-speed scores were precisely the reverse: a sluggish.4ppm. We were, nevertheless, happily surprised at the Dell A922's high-quality scans. The greyscale image was wonderful, matching the original target precisly, from gradient to shading. The colour scan image was also pretty fine, although it had some visible banding. We tested the Dell A922 at its factory default configurations, which can be altered to boost the machine's speed and output.
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