There's lots of competition in the ink jet printer business…but not when it comes to portable models. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. With more and more people replacing desktop PCs with notebooks…the market is growing for portable printers as well. Canon has been able to capture about 70 percent of the market. The i80 does a credible job with text and photos…and can connect wirelessly through infrared or an optional Bluetooth connection. Now Canon has announced the i90 model. The company's Andrew Peterson…

"It's a new mobile printer in our Pixma line up. It's going to give you increased speeds of 16 pages a minute in black and 12 in color. It's going to offer you new long life mode and new emergency mode. Long life mode allows you to save 66 percent more ink, laying down less ink, and it's a driver setting. As well as the emergency mode allows you to, if you by chance run out of the black text this will go to a composite mode so you can lay down black text in finished projects if you happen to run out of your black ink."

A potential life saver in a pinch. There is a price for the portability…as there is with PCs. The i90 is priced at about 250 dollars. About the market for portable printers, Peterson says…

"The majority of the market is going to be the laptop market. One-third of computer sales are laptops and we find that the majority of these users are purchasing this printer because of the size and the weight."

The portables are equipped with PictBridge technology….allowing them to print directly from digital cameras without a PC. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.