Dell says that the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 962 ($179 direct) is meant as the next step up from the 942. In truth, however, it's less of a photo printer than the 942; it can print from PictBridge cameras but not from memory cards. On the other hand, it's more of a full-fledged AIO. With its built-in fax modem and 50-page ADF, it works as a printer, scanner, standalone copier, and standalone fax machine. And it will let you fax, as well as scan and e-mail, through your computer.
Setting up the 11.9- by 19.6- by 16.5-inch (HWD) 962 is standard for an AIO with a USB 2.0 port and two print cartridges. The option to use a photo cartridge along with the tricolor cartridge for six-color printing helps justify the photo-printer designation. But the unit ships with only black and tricolor cartridges for four-color printing, and Dell didn't supply a photo cartridge for our tests. Using six colors would likely improve photo quality marginally, but it would almost certainly yield slower performance than we found.
The 962 has a Lexmark design (Lexmark is one of the sources for Dell printers). So it's not a complete surprise that on our performance tests (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing, www.qualitylogic.com), the 962 proved a close match, test for test, to the physically similar, but more expensive, Lexmark X7170