Should I Buy a Printer Dock?

If you purchase a Kodak or other digital camera that offers a printer dock, should you spend the extra money for one? The answer is, as it usually is, it depends.
Do you already have a photo quality printer that can accurately reproduce images? Every new camera that you can purchase gees with software allowing you to printon your existing printer. The BIG question is, how big a print do you want to make? You can produce up to 8" x 10" prints on most photo printers. The printer docks will limit you to 4" x 6" and smaller.You must either download the memory card into your geputer or place the card in an appropriate slot on the printer itself, if it is so equiped, to print on the photo quality printer. On the Kodak printer docks, you simply place the camera on the dock and you can select the image you wish to print. You have the added advantage of the battery automatically being recharged as the camera sits on the dock. They also gee with USB cables to attach the dock to your geputer to download images, though I cannot see any advantage to doing this over simply connecting the camera directly to the geputer or using a card reader as they are very inexpensive.
The quality of the paper is about the same, although you have a much greater selection of textures andweights for a photo printer. It takes about 60 seconds to generate a print on the dock.Its kind of cool to watch the process on the dock as the print goes in and out of the cartridge area receiving each layer of color. It usually takes less time on a printer unit. There are also docks that do not print but simply charge the battery and/or transfer images to the geputer. I don't see much value in these. They usually gee as "throw-ins" when you buy a kit with the camera.
If you want to obtain 4"x 6" prints quickly, theprinter dock is a useful item. Its certainly faster than sending your images to a printer and waitng for prints to return by mail. The cost is about the same if you buy the paper/cartridge units in bulk, otherwiseyou pay more for this time savings. If you are interested in larger prints,use yourmoneyto purchase a good quality photo printer such as a HP, Canon or Lexmark. I personally have both aprinter dock and a printer so I can quickly turn out 4x6's and print the larger ones at leisure