[Jarrett Kaufman @ Feb 6th 2007 1:52PM]

I won't hold my breath on these. The 100 years, first off, is harder to confirm than with most companies. They don't state whether it's photo album conditions or under glass, indoors. Companies like Canon, with their Chromalife100, like to promote the lesser of the two (photo album) by saying 100 years, when they get only 30 in the more realistic, under glass, indoors conditions. As well, Kodak's been at odds with the Henry Wilhelm Institute (the foremost authority on print permanence) since the beginning, since Henry Wilhelm's the guy who blew the whistle on just how quickly Kodak's photos fade. As such, they're the only printer company that doesn't use his information, and therefore their numbers can't be backed up.

As for the machines, themselves, it's clear they're shifting mostly away from the razor and blades pricing, as these machines are roughly double the cost of their comparable competition. Cheap ink is great, and hopefully this forces the competition to step up, but most consumers are going to have a hard time comparing the Kodak printers to their more experienced competition and pay twice as much for comparable or lesser hardware, even at the promise of lower cost down the line. In fact most customers don't even print frequently enough to make up the price difference.

Not to mention, while the cartridges are half the cost, we have yet to see any sign of the ink, itself, being at the same print volume for that price.

And the final clincher is photo quality. Kodak's banking on their name, but anyone experienced with photos knows that name hasn't meant anything for a while. Fuji surpassed them in film, everyone surpassed them in cameras, and they haven't competed on photo printer quality ever. Also they have no experience in the ink jet printer market, as the last printer they "made" was actually a rebranded Epson. So who knows whose technology they're using, but if it's their own I'd be shocked if their brand new technology can touch the photo quality Epson's been putting out for decades, or even the quality Canon's very recently stepped up to. I'd expect to see their quality more in line with HP's (which only looks photo quality from a distance), or more likely Lexmark, which is quite possibly the company they're licensing their tech from.

I'll wait until these hit the market and I can see the quality for myself, but I'm not convinced. Only reason I hope they do well is so that the real printer companies will have to shift their profit model to compete, and then I can get affordable prints AND good quality from companies like Epson.