The HP Pavilion Verde a6645f. I think I have that graphic design on one of my T-shirts.
(Credit: HP)Hewlett-Packard is throwing its hat into the expanding ring of companies with a thing for green. If you're serious about doing your part to protect the environment or you just want a stylish-looking monitor and desktop, the company has some new options for you.
On Monday, HP announced two new desktops and one new display. According to the company, all three have been designed to have a reduced impact on the environment.
The HP Pavilion Verde Special Edition a6645f and HP Pavilion Phoenix Special Edition a6655f are the two new eco PCs, and the 25.5-inch HP w2558hc is the new eco-friendly display.
According to HP, both PCs are Energy Star qualified and meet the standards for "silver" registration in the Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT). Each PC features a power management tool that purportedly provides up to 45 percent energy savings compared with PCs without power management enabled.
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The HP Photosmart C8180 isn't cheap, so we wouldn't recommend you throwing down $400 for this multifunction unless you're an amateur photographer who needs a top-notch printer and won't mind waiting more than a minute for each photo.
We just finished testing the C8180 (full review), and we were impressed by its built-in LightScribe drive. LightScribe is a direct disc-labeling system that uses lasers to burn an image directly onto the disc. The LightScribe system is meant to eliminate the smudges and peeling that inevitably happens with sticker labels, and the fact that Hewlett-Packard decided to include this proprietary method in the c8180 speaks to the popularity of the media. Feel free to insert your opinion: do you use LightScribe yourself or do you prefer the old sticker way?
Unfortunately, the c8180 isn't without its faults. First, there's no auto-document feeder, so forget about scanning and copying stacks of paper. Second, the printer is so slow that we recommend you pick up a hobby to occupy your time while you want for the tray to spit out your photo. We ran our standard speed tests and the c8180 couldn't even print one photo per minute! The standard rate came out to about .66 photos per minute; like we said, slow. Good thing the prints themselves look great because HP would have to be crazy to think that anyone would wait more than a minute per photo if it were anything less than flawless.
(Credit:
Newegg)
The day I bought myself a LightScribe DVD drive was the day I put away my Sharpie marker forever. Sure, it takes upwards of 20 minutes to burn a custom label on a LightScribe disc, but the results are vastly superior to my chicken scratch.
Newegg has the Samsung SH-S202N 20X internal DVD burner with LightScribe technology for just $26.99. It's a new unit with no rebates, free shipping, and mostly positive reviews.
If you've never done it before, swapping out an optical drive is a piece of cake. Unplug the power and interface connectors, slide out the old drive, then slide in the replacement. Reconnect the cables and you're pretty much good to go. You'll need a system with a parallel interface (this is not a SATA drive) and some LightScribe CD and/or DVD media. Head to the official LightScribe site to learn everything else you need to know about the technology.
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