This thing may look like an X-Man accessory or strange sci-fi gun that straps on your arm and sucks your precious lifeforce with every round it fires, but no, as cool as that would be, it’s just something UPS is using so they can get all label-free. It’s HP’s Handheld sp400 All-in-One, which scans barcodes and prints sorting info directly onto boxes with quick-drying ink. No paper labels are required at all. UPS has been testing it out at a shipping center in Orlando, where they reportedly used it on 40,000 boxes with not a single error. Of course there was that one guy they pants in order to tattoo his butt cheeks, but that doesn’t count.

This device alone will make the company much greener. It will replace several larger, less green pieces of equipment like a giant thermal printer, PC, monitor and scanner. According to UPS the company will save 92,456 hours, 1,338 tons of paper and 3,807 tons of carbon emissions a year. That’s pretty big.

Many of us miss Polaroids. They weren’t all that great, but they did provide a strange sort of instant gratification. Sadly, Polaroid is dead. But it keeps coming back in other forms. You might remember Zink, that company whose technology prints digital photos on the spot without ink.

Well, they’re back, this time with strange bedfellows. They’ve been rolling around in the sheets with toy-maker Tomy to make the xiao TIP-521, a digital camera with a printer built in. The xiao has a five megapixel resolution, so you may want to wait a bit. The point is they are on it people. Polaroid lives on.

Back when I had a real job I used to maintain the network, computers and printers in a large pharmacy. Someone was always breaking the laser printers and every time I had to mess with one, I ended up coated in black toner powder. The stuff was next to impossible to get off your clothes.

Canon has introduced a new printer that also uses clear toner, which I am sure would be easier to get out of your clothes. The printer using the clear toner is called the imagePRESS C1+. The printer is designed for the light production and proofing markets.

Have you ever wished you had a real-life replicator that can actually create 3D objects from nothing? Like the Star Trek Replicator? It’s here. Actually 3D printers have been around for awhile, but are just now getting small enough to fit onto your desk. The Objet Alaris 30 is a compact desktop 3D printer that uses a peripheral with PolyJet Photopolymer Jetting. This helps it produce 600 x 600 dpi objects up to 11.5 x 7.7 x 5.9 inches in size.

That’s an improvement over the 5-inch cube that they did last year. The printer can manufacture small moving elements as thin as 0.0011 inches. According to Objet, the Alaris 30 Desktop 3D Printer will give you 36 hours of unattended printing from your 3D CAD files. No word on pricing or availability.

We recently got a chance to go hands on with Epson Artisan 800 All-in-One Printer. Just like the Epson WorkForce 600 All-in-One, it didn’t disappoint. The Artisan 800 is geared toward the more creative type of office. Designed to combine sleek styling with high performance. It has many of the same features, but with a creative slant. The Artisan 800 features built in wired and wireless networking, ultra fast print speeds (38 ppm), 6-color ink, a 7.8” touch panel, a 3.5” LCD screen, standalone photo capabilities, faded photo restorations, and a smart ink system. The Artisan 800 is smaller then the Epson WorkForce 600, which is nice as it can be tucked away a bit more conveniently.

Out of the box you get an ethernet cable, power cable, driver/software disc, user manuals, some sample paper, a small bit of phone cable and the necessary printer cartridges. No USB cable, but if you plan on using it wirelessly, that’s no big deal.

Printers can go either way. I’ve found that they are generally terrible due to high expectations, or in some cases they actually live up to the hype. I can tell you straight away, the Epson WorkForce 600 All-in-One Printer lives up to and even exceeds the hype. First, it looks great and it’s not much bigger then your standard printer, so you don’t need a lot of extra desk real estate. That’s a good thing for anybody, but being designed for small and home businesses, it’s a huge plus to have a work horse that looks good and goes just about anywhere. Some of the features on the 600 include WiFi capabilities, laser quality printing, fast printing speeds, built-in memory card reader, and a super handy LCD to preview your pictures and operate the whole thing effortlessly.

Right out of the box you get an ethernet cable, power cable, driver/software disc, user manuals, even sample paper, a small bit of phone cable and the necessary printer cartridges. No USB cable, which is common and with the Wi-Fi capabilities you really don’t need one.

The new PCP-1200 photo printer from Casio is aimed at those who care enough to send the very best. Or at least the very best that you can create. It has a 7inch widescreen touch display and keyboard so you can print text on post card sized paper.

You can also print photos Straight from your digital camera, cell phone and memory cards. You also get over 60 stamps like hearts, stars etc so you can girl it up to your heart’s content. Great for greetings cards of all types. The PCP-1200 photo printer is currently available in Japan for around $500.

Many of us go to extreme measures in order to keep pests out of our homes. Normally they’ll head straight for any crumbs that you’ve left on your floor or just blindly enter your dwelling as if for no apparent reason. They are easy enough to take care of. Start stomping or call in the verminators. But what do you do when insects start invading your tech?

One couple started noticing ants on their computer desk. They couldn’t quite figure out where they were coming from. There didn’t seem to be a problem anywhere else nearby. As you can see in the video, the work area is very clean. So the wife discovers that the printer isn’t working. The guy checks it out and finds that a small invading ant army had taken up residence in the scanner area. Pretty weird and makes you wonder where else they are that you don’t know about.

Polaroid finally has a release date for their portable Bluetooth mini-photo printer, the PoGo. It uses an inkless printing system developed by Zink to create 2 x 3-inch full-color copies of images from your camera or cellphone. The photo sheets contain tiny dye crystals that form your picture when they’re heated and the process takes roughly sixty seconds.

The PoGo will give you fifteen prints per charge and connects via USB or Bluetooth. They expect it to be a big hit with teens, but who knows, might be a hit with grannies for all I know. You can get one starting on July 6th for $149.