Take the PC out of printing with Olympus combo

Olympus has introduced a combination of digital devices which will allow consumers to have flexibilty and creativity in their digital image printing without the need for a PC in the process.

Olympus digital cameras new IR-500 provides the core of this setup. The Total Imaging Solution as Olympus calls it revolves around this new model 4-megapixel camera, a 40GB S-HD-100 portable hard drive and a P-S100 dye-sublimation photo printer. Olympus noted that a portable DVD burner will also ship at a future date, but no specific information is currently available.

The IR-500 features a 360 degree rotating LCD viewfinder, and also offers 2.8X optical and 30X total zoom, an f2.9-f4.8 aperture range in the lens, 19 scene modes, and the ability to shoot video at 640-by-480, 320-by-240 or 160-by-120 pixel resolution. It uses xD-Picture Card Media--a 16MB card is bundled with it--and includes the ability to sort images into up to 12 albums with a capacity of 100 pictures each. Pricing is $499. http://writingbee.net/

You can connect this camera to a PC via USB cable but if you utilize the system a portable hard drive ($299) and a portable printer ($199). The hard drive offers file management capabilities, USB 2.0 connectivity, and only downloads new images when connected to the camera.

The P-S100 portable printer can produce a 4-by-6-inch print in approximately 84 seconds and offers a 50-sheet photo paper capacity.

This set up raises some strong interest in my household where my wife is not what you would call a computer geek. She struggles with the PC at times and has expressed a keen interest in being able to print our digital images without going through a lot of hassle. With this arrangment she could set up digital prinint gon her hobby desk and build scrap books without ever booting up the computer. Olympus digital cameras