Check reality before you fall for beauty or the magic midget

The other day, I found myself in an electronics store, staring at a little man talking to me from a computer screen. I say little man, not because it was a small monitor, but because he appeared to be standing on a sheet of A4 paper while using an umbrella to protect himself from a shower of colourful ink droplets.

The tiny salesman was explaining that smaller dots were much better than higher resolution. I don't know if that one has you scratching your head, but I was puzzled.

Later, I was watching TV when a commercial featuring a twirling Canto-poptress with gold foil on her hands came on. She stood transfixed, staring at the mystical image of an inkjet printer, floating in a transparent bubble.

If you have been paying attention to printer ads, you will know that I am talking about Hewlett-Packard and Epson, respectively. While it is easy to get caught up in the mists of cutting-edge technology, there comes a point when you have to take a reality check.

HP's little man was trying to tell me that smaller dots are better than more dots per inch. But if the dots are smaller, can't more of them fit into a linear inch? Not if you are dealing with physics, a la Hewlett-Packard.

I am talking about HP's Photo REtII technology. The idea is that the machine can lay down a 10-picolitre dot, which is so small that the printer can lay several dots, one on top of another, to blend colours. This, HP claims, allows them to produce more colours than other printers.