HiTi Photoprinter: Fit to print?

Photo-printer companies keep telling us that digital snaps are left to languish in the shoebox of our hard-disk drives. Many of us have abandoned the traditional high street one-hour photo shops and no one gets to see our pics anymore -- right? Well, sort of.

Although we're not printing out that many digital photos, more people are actually getting to see them, on the back of the camera at parties, on PC or laptop slideshows, even on the odd portable device like the iPod photo. And rarely a day goes by without some freak we once knew emailing us photos of their new niece or a holiday they've been on.

The idea of the photo printer is that regardless of the cost involved, printing photos in your home is more convenient than getting them printed by a traditional photo developer. We've never been won over by the concept -- the high street is still the best place to get digital photos developed. Using a high street developer means you don't need to maintain your own printer, and, because of the volume of ink these places buy in bulk, it's cheaper.

Photo printers might seem like a more convenient way of geting physical with your photos, but considering that most paper packs allow 50 prints, and ink consumption is also high, you'll be heading back to the chemist for more supplies almost as often as you would if you'd used traditional film. Printers are constantly hungry for consumables. It can be cheaper to run a child than some demanding photo printers.

None the less, we've got our hands on the HiTi Photo Printer 641PS, to see if there's anything to the concept. We'll let you know later in the week if we're won over by printing our snaps at home. Judging from the quality of the demo printouts, the photo output of HiTi matches anything we've seen from traditional developers. -CS

Update: this review is now live here.