Does $4+/gallon gas make home photo printing a better deal?

I was interested to see coverage in Business Week's Technology section by Aaron Ricadela on the nearly year-old HP (NYSE HPQ) Photosmart A826 printer, in a piece titled "HP Wants You to Print More Pictures". (And yes, we believe the assertion in the title is true, the company really would like to see you print more pictures!)

One of the favorably reviewed (four out of five stars) printer's "cons", though, are its "pricey prints", which Ricadela computes at 60 cents a pop for 4x6's, which he then compares to Walgreen's 12-to-19 cents and HP Snapfish's 9 cents, but not including shipping and handling, of course. And maybe the equation, for those folks "...looking to stop making drugstore runs", does indeed change when getting to the drug store means burning off $4 and up gasoline! That thought even occurred to me over the weekend, when making my Walgreen's run for a stack of photos that I preferred NOT to print (for non-economic reasons I've discussed here often) on one of my home photo printers.

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