I was recently given a Dell 926 All-In-One printer and instructed to check it out and review it. After hanging installations, a BSoD, system crash, and I/O device error message from Windows, and general frustration and desires of throwing in the towel on my part, I finally checked out Dell’s drivers and downloads (thanks Jason!) and was able to download a patch/upgrade that made Dell work with my computer. It, by the way, has a snazzy 3.4 gHz processor, 2 gigs of RAM and is running Windows Vista.
The printer itself is very nice to look at. It is white and slate gray/blue with a glossy finish. I’m rather used to the matte finish of my computers, peripherals and accessories, so the glossy finish, especially on the white of the printer, was a nice touch. Size-wise, it is about the same as my current all-in-one printer. Weight wise, it is a bit lighter. Whether this is good or bad, I’m not sure.
Features of the printer: The setup of the printer-accessed options is very minimalistic. The screen of the printer is more of a bar, is rather inset and old school with the icky green/yellow background and pixel-y dark gray capitalized text. I can’t really do much with the options, aside from setting up the bare minimum for printing, copying and scanning. Having been enjoying an all-in-one printer with a full color with many features and options that I can access and configure from the printer itself, I have to say that I am disappointed with how little the Dell 926 has to offer.
Now, onto the printing and scanning!
Scanning: the Dell 926 scans quickly, and sends scanned items to my computer and into Adobe Illustrator. I can’t tell you the quality of the scanned photo I used, as my trial for Adobe Illustrator ran out some time ago, and thus I was unable to open the scanned file. What happens to a scanned file that is sent to a program that cannot open, I’m not sure. Dell? Anyone? Bueller?
(P.S. Dell, you should send the scan to the computer as a standard jpeg!)
Printing: I decided to compare the quality of the printing of the Dell all-in-one printer to the printing of my HP all-in-one printer:
In the case of plain documents, I printed a page of paragraphs, each one colored differently: black, dark gray, red, yellow, orange, green, blue and purple. The Dell printer’s page featured colors that were not as dark or vibrant as those of the HP.
I then printed a 4 x 6 photo of my kitten on each printer. I did two on each, actually. The first was a matte finish photo, the second a high gloss finish. For the sake of a fair test, I used the same types of photo paper for both matte and gloss on both printers.
The Dell prints were a disappointment. Fuzziness and grain were much more noticeable with the Dell, and the whites of the photos had a definite blueish cast to them.
Also, an attempt at printing a 4 x 6 photo (432 x 288 pixels; 72 pixel resolution) from Dell’s All-In-One center resulted in the following. I had to use Windows Vista’s print options to have an accurately sized printed photos.
Bottom line: Obviously, you get what you pay for! The Dell 926 is reasonably priced at $69.99. It is a basic, bare-bones printer that gets the job done. While the installation did NOT go smoothly for me, my persistence paid off, and I was able to test out a printer that, while not meeting my standards or standing up to the comparison between it and my HP Photosmart 2610 all-in-one, does a pretty decent job of printing, scanning and copying for an under $100 printer.
P.S. Dell, and other computer manufacturers for that matter: would it kill you to include a USB cable with your printers!?
My name is Jenn, and I'm a 27 year old married and babied chick. In addition to a husband, a seven year old daughter, and a five year old autistic son, I also have four cats, three hermit crabs, two frogs, a few fish, and one snorty little Pug. I work from home doing a variety of writing and even some web design. I love blogging, digital photography and web design. Kitty.nu has been around for several years. Once upon a time it was home to my personal blog (you can find that over at 
Whew, you had a lot of troubles with that thing. I’m suspecting Vista myself, I have a friend that has that on her computer and she was having major trouble with stuff just the other day.
For scanning, send it to “file” on the images and it will work great. I have this printer too and I scanned in a sketch I had made and sent it to ‘file” and it saves as a .jpg. Which is good because I run GIMP, and the printer does not give you the option to scan to GIMP. LOL Right now I am playing with sending to MS Works to get text scanned in and loving not having to type back in manuscripts I wrote over ten years ago on a computer I don’t have all the parts to anymore.
i had a bit of trouble but after ignoring the auto install and using the CD only I had it working just fine!
our kitten is very cute!
Thanks for the info on the printers. I have the hp for some time now. and have thought about others in comparison these blogs are very helpful in the reschearch
I also have a HP printer, and I love it!! I cannot believe that the makers of your printer didn’t include the proper USB cable, however. LOL
Your kitten is adorable!!
luckily i too own a HP printer, but i gave me some trouble in initial stages, but after replacing it with new one i got every thing right.
even after owning a good printer i suggest every one to not opt a cheap ink and paper,
Professional gloss photo paper and INkprovides the look and feel of traditional glossy photos.
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I have been havin an annoying little problem lately.
I have a DELL 926 all in one center, it used to work (I was able to print, scan and copy) however yesterday I installed my router and when I go to the all in one center and select scan or copy I get this error:
“Scan Was Not Successful
Try these solutions:
-Disconnect and reconnect the USB cable
-Disconnect and reconnect the All-In-One’s power cable
-Restart your computer”
Please help
duarte_alberto@yahoo.fr
Thanks for the review. I thought I was a moron and misplaced the usb cable. Yay, it wasn’t just me.