joshwaller.co.uk

Looking for a new photo quality printer? I was, and decided the Canon Pixma ip2500 seemed like a good choice, from £32 (£45 in PC World). Print quality and features appear to be very good for the price, offering "Photo lab quality". Black is very black. Colours seem overly saturated on default settings. Installation on Windows XP is very easy - on Vista I had much less luck, ie it didn't work. If you want cheaper running costs then the Epson D92 may be a better choice due to cheaper replacement cartridges (£6 for the Epsons, vs £12 for the Canon). + Price - around £30 online, amazon, ebuyer + 30 Matte photo sheets included free + Very quick printing (22ppm black, 16ppm colour) + Borderless photo quality printing + 100 sheet doc feeder + Fairly quiet (night quiet mode also available) + Colour and image quality good on basic paper - No USB cable included (annoyingly the standard for printers) - Doesn't want to install with Vista (XP fine) - Colours appear overly satu...

We're off to home 2 rome! The car we are taking (a Mazda 626 1.8 LX) has made it to 140,000 miles on the clock! If you feel like giving some money to charity, then you can do that here . More details on Facebook !

The usual "new car" syndromes are apparent* - you can't see the front of the car, the ride height is high (and the seat can't be lowered very well), the visibility through the back window is poor (perhaps the estate version will be better), quite a firm ride (although it doesn't seem as overly firm as the Golf), the seats aren't especially comfy (overly firm)... BUT they are very supportive and there's a lot of nice things too: USB socket for ipod / pen-drive full of mp3s, spare power point up front, good grip even in the wet, copes well with speed bumps even though the ride is quite firm. Performance: the 1.6 litre petrol engine manages to produce 120bhp, which is quite impressive (for a 1.6 litre engine - compare that to the 115bhp produced by the Golf's 1.6 litre petrol engine), the gearing seems quite high / long (?), with 30mph reachable in 1st, 60mph in 2nd! And the engine revs up to 6500rpm quite happily and quickly with a fairly decent sound. ...