The Price: $200

The Verdict: It has been a long time since I last shopped for a printer, and if Brother's new addition to their Professional Series line is any indicator, consumers are getting a lot more for their buck these days. For less than $200 you can expect a 4-in-1 device that does all of its tasks exceedingly well.

Setting up the device on a home network was no problem at all, and exchanging / printing files between multiple computers, media cards and USB drives was a smooth process. The print quality for both documents and photos was impressive for its class (6000 x 1200 dpi printing /19200 dpi on scans) and it cranks them out at a good clip (35ppm black and 28ppm color on printing / 23cpm black, 20cpm color on scans ). It also has some useful added features like scan to JPEG, TIFF and PDF as well as the ability to print on 11x17 ledger size paper, which means you won't have to make a trip to Kinkos if you need to print something on that scale. Plus, it has a decent 150 sheet paper capacity for large printing projects.

On the negative side, it isn't the smallest or sturdiest printer out there, and you will have to factor in the cost of a pricey four cartridge ink system down the line (available in standard an high yield versions). It is also compatible with 802.11b/g networks only, so if you are running draft-N you are out of luck. The software wasn't anything to write home about either—I found myself doing most of the work directly on the flip-up 3.3-inch color LCD display. At any rate, these are not huge problems in the overall scheme of things, so the Brother MFC-5890CN is definitely something to look into if you have a small business or a need for a more feature-rich printer at a relatively low price point. Expect to see it on store shelves starting on August 27th.

Press Release (Japanese) [The Raw Feed]

Product Page [Buy.com]

Gotta Read the Labels

Seriously, thank God for over-the-air daytime TV. Not only would I get pretty lonely without the virtual companionship of Judge Joe Brown, but I'd also miss out on some great column fodder. Case in point: an ad I spied during a recent 2 p.m. airing of Law & Order on TNT. (Like any good cheapskate, I go sans paid cable, relying on a spliced cable modem hookup to provide my signal; bless Time Warner Cable's heart for piping in gratis TNT and TBS.) The commercial featured an elderly couple who mistakenly donned each other's dentures. The solution? Why, a Dymo LetraTag 11944 labelmaker, of course. Print out a "His" label and a "Hers" label, and never suffer the embarrassment of misworn dentures again!

Okay, so the ad assumes that the couple in question has a collective IQ just a few points higher than an earthenware jug. But I didn't waste too much time nitpicking on the plot's believability; what stayed with me on this one was how humble labelmakers have evolved into low-end electronic gadgets, complete with two-line LCD screen and fax-like printing technology—all while staying below the vaunted $20 barrier. How do they do it? Methinks someone over at Dymo studied the shaving industry while obtaining their MBA. After the jump, a partial explanation as to why Dymo is worth nearly three-quarters of a billion bucks (for real), and where low-end favorite Casio fits into the picture.

What's really impressive about Dymo's budget LetraTag line is how much the designers took their cue from higher-end products, at least in terms of user interface. Playing around with the Blackberry-like QX50 the other day, I was impressed by how comfortable it was to manipulate the QWERTY keyboard. The more popular 11944, on the other hand, seems to be patterned after the PDA-style tools that are toted around by FedEx drivers and meter maids. Two-hand typing is trickier on the 11944, but it cradles nicely in the palm and features a satisfyingly crisp LCD readout. I mean, hey, what more could you expect for $12.91 (the going rate for a blue version of the 11944 at Provantage.com)? Okay, so you gotta feed it six AA batteries at a time—that's why CVS sells private-label batteries, right?

Now, let's rewind fourteen years, to the dawn of the digital labelmakers age, and do some comparison shopping. Back then, Dymo was owned by Esselte (the Pendaflex people), and dealing with some fierce competition from market leader Brother. Dymo was actually playing catchup in the space, having been slow to make the transfer from manual labelmakers to digital ones. Its 4500 machine displayed a bit more text than the Brother mode, and cost the same—an absurd $249. Not exactly the sort of thing you'd buy to tag little Johnny's underwear for summer camp, eh?

By 2000, Dymo had gotten the price on an equivalent machine (the LetraTag 2000) down to $49.99. Now the current LetraTag lineup beats the comparable Brother offerings by an average of $10 to $20 per unit. Dymo's only real competitor for lablemaker hegemony? Good ol' Casio, with models such as the KL-60SR going for around $17. But a meager four-character LCD display? C'mon, Casio—we all expect more from the company that brought the world the VL-Tone 1.

So, no question, Dymo's the proverbial 800-pound gorilla of the labelmaker industry. (Quick etymological aside: Why 800 pounds? Why not 900, or 873? Discuss and share.) But I had no idea how much of a beast the brand truly was until I dug up news of Dymo's sale last year to Newell Rubbermaid, for $730 million in cash. True, Dymo makes a lot of coin off the enterprise market—Suzy Homemaker ain't dropping $168 on the RhinoPRO 5000. But it's the LetraTag line that gets the TNT ads, which means they're a pretty big revenue generator. Has Dymo really ratcheted down production costs that much? Have I underestimated the price-slashing effects of technology's Guandongization yet again?

Nah, me thinketh not. The catch with Dymo is that there's really no widely available knock-off tape to refill your LetraTag unit—you're stuck buying the name-brand stuff from the company, which runs about $6-$8 per roll. It's exactly the business model used Schick and all those razors folks—break even or take a loss on the frame, but make it back (and then some) on the blades.

It's a business model that works in large part because, let's face it, consumers aren't very far-sighted—myself included. When I got a "free" Mach 3 Turbo razor in the mail a few years back, I felt like I'd just hit a Pick Six at the track. Now, hundreds of dollars later, I realize that I was suckered out of my low-end ways.

Not that I think Dymo is sinister—just sharp business thinkers. They know as long as they beat the Brothers of the world on the hardware, they can make it all up on tape sales. And therein lies a couple of vital lessons on the psychology of us cheapo gadget buyers: it's easy to put stars in our eyes, and we're not particularly interested in long-term calculations.

Oh, and one more thing: we're suckers for design aesthetics that make a gadget look more expensive than it really is. That Blackberry-style QWERTY keyboard on the QX50? Makes me think I'm living in the future—a future in which I'm earning a wage worthy of T. Boone Pickens. Kudos, Dymo—you've figured out that, despite our modest incomes, low-end consumers are a vain and insecure loot as well.

NEXT WEEK: ShackWatch returns!

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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The Clacking Never Stops

Of all the lessons I learned as a greenhorn journalist during the Clinton Era, the most valuable by far involved how best to judge the relevancy of reader mail. Every week, I'd get a few letters from my magazine's subscribers, most of whom fell into one of two categories: schoolkids who wanted me to help them with an assignment, or retired know-it-alls who quibbled with my facts. (Sample quibble: "In your June 20th article, you misstate the average diameter of a diplodocus nostril; according to my extensive research on the subject, it is five inches, not four.")

There was also the occasional letter from a reader who fell into category three—people who are absolutely buggin'. Often the level of such a reader's insanity was not immediately apparent, at least from the context of the letter—they'd start off with the typical salutation, or maybe a learned quote from Thomas Hobbes. But by the end, they'd be accusing me of conspiring with the Malaysian government to place radio transmitters behind their eyeballs, and would I please stop it?

After wasting far too many minutes reading through such dreck, a higher-up explained to me that there was a simple way to tell a crazy letter on sight: "The crazy ones," he pointed out, "always use typewriters." And wouldn't you know it, he was right.

So, where does today's slightly off-kilter conspiracy buff go for his/her typewriting needs, especially if they're short on cash? The gadgetry world is still churning out a limited number of these devices of yore, though the fanciest models are still surprisingly expensive—guess the economies of scale aren't working in favor of the industry. After the jump, everything you wanted to know about today's low-end typewriter market but were afraid (or simply unwilling) to ask.

Now, I know what you're thinking: writing about typewriters is the easy way out. I mean, we've all seen those USA Today and Akron Bugle bits, run every six months or so, about some lovable old coots who refuse to upgrade to the PC era. Okay, granted. But I've come not to praise old coots, but rather to ponder how the typewriter industry is able to soldier on in the age of the $288 Everex Explora.

As far as I can tell, there are only two companies still making typewriters in any sort of quantities: Lexmark, which purchased IBM's Selectric line, and the Italian company Olivetti, which has the manual market locked down. Smith Corona went bankrupt a while back, though there's still a branded website that offers two models, starting at a decidedly non-low-end $149.99. And don't even venture into the "New" section at Typewriters.com unless you've got Paul Allen type of money: even with an 80-character LCD display and a built-in spellchecker, no typewriter on the planet should be retailing for $599.95.

Thankfully for typewriter aficionados, there's plenty of old stock out there, particularly from Brother. The winner by a country mile is the GX-6750, with the trademark Perfectype touch keyboard and, best of all, "automatic carriage return." Prices start at $30 for units that have been slightly scuffed while sitting on the docks lo these many years.

Of course, there's also a sizeable number of second-run typewriters out there, some of which betray signs of the industry's late 1990s effort to compete with laptops. There's no better example of that misguided fad than the Brother PY80, which weighs in at a not-that-impressive 2.8 kilograms. Eat your heart out, Fujitsu Lifebook.

All kidding aside, I do understand that there's a certain niche market for typewriters that's not gonna go away soon. They're still ideal for doing quick fixes to forms, which is why Brother pitches its typewriters to the government and education markets, rather than mainstream consumers. And at least for the manual Olivetti, I can see the usefulness in emerging markets; just because your village has yet to be granted reliable electricity doesn't mean you should be consigned to a life of pencil and paper. (Hat tip on that last point: Everyone who wrote in to lambaste me for not recognizing the Third World applications of the Polaroid OneStep.)

Also, of course, you've got that vast market of newsmagazine readers feel an overwhelming urge to write letters-to-the-editor regarding those secret Major League Baseball satellites. That's certainly not a consumer base that's gonna dry up anytime soon; the main challenge for the Lexmarks and Olivettis of the world is getting such folks to upgrade to new typewriters, which requires imbuing said products with a certain degree of affordability. (The overly conspiracy-minded, in addition to favoring weird margins and single spacing, are notoriously budget conscious.) Suggestions for how that can be done? Drop me a line.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Low End Theory column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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USB sewing machines from Brother the Innovis M200 and N150 [New Launches]