Printing pictures from your PC. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Ink jet printers that do a respectable job printing photographs have been around for years. The Epson 740 was a long time favorite. But the best I've seen lately is from Lexmark. At 200 dollars, the Z-65 is not the cheapest printer around, but it produces photographic prints that rival what you would get from a photo finisher. Marketing manager Peggy Stamps...

"The Z-65 is introducing a lot of features to Lexmark. Up to 48 hundred DPI means the highest resolution available in the market, 48 hundred by 12 hundred DPI. So we're going with real top of the line photo resolution. We've also introduced some features that will help in the production of photographs. One is an auto paper sensing device."

So the printer knows when you are using photo grade paper in one of its two paper trays. Another advantage is speed. The Z-61 churns out 21 pages per minute of black and white text. A high resolution 5 by 7 photo takes about 2 minutes. Of course the 200 dollar price is only part of the story. Printer manufacturers make their real profits on cartridges. They sell for an average thirty five dollars... and unlike some rivals, Lexmark has not switch to individual color ink tanks. So when one color is empty, you'll have to replace the entire color cartridge. The Z-65 is noisier than some of its rivals too. To some extent Lexmark may have a reputation as being a low end printer... because it was the first to offer models below one hundred dollars. But that may be an unfair rap... especially given the quality of the prints from the Z-65. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin