Having been a student for the majority of my life, printing from home has never been a necessity for me. There has always been a printer of quality far beyond my means available at school, college or university, so for years I did not even consider adding a printer to my PC. That changed recently when I was, shockingly, forced to work for a year and suddenly discovered life without free printing. Cue a stroll down the unfamiliar aisles of computer stores, printers stacked ten-deep, a maze of features and dots per inches that left me yearning for the good old days of dot matrix monstrosities that just did the job and left you alone.

Much of the disappointment I experienced with this product was due to my own stupidity in impulse buying this lump of plastic and I hope by reading this you will perhaps avoid the same misfortune. With the advantage of hindsight, let me state categorically that I would sooner have tried to buy £29 worth of crack from a policeman than blow the money on a product which redefines false economy. The Z13 follows a similar marketing model to, for example, the Nintendo Gamecube, in that the product itself is sold at a near-loss with money being made on consumables - in Nintendo's case, over-priced games, and in Lexmark's case, vastly over-priced ink cartridges.

A black cartridge borrowed from a friend gave better results. Print quality on the test page was acceptable although looked slightly blotched and fuzzy in places. Text was quite well defined although again, some fuzziness was evident. For draft documents and for personal use, the Z13 gives more than acceptable results in black and white. For a letter or document which needs to look good, I'd suggest the Z13 is not the best choice. Unsurprising given the price but something to bear in mind if you think you might be able to push it every now and then when you need an important letter running off - you'll struggle.

Technical specifications and such like are best read from Lexmark's website, as to be honest, at this price the specifications are largely irrelevant - suffice to say, they are somewhat weak. If you plan to purchase this printer, you only need to know what you are letting yourself in for, as its problems far outweigh the advantage of the price.

The first action you must take is to disable the Lexmark service. You'll find this is pointing to a now (after un-installation of the Lexmark drivers and software) non-existent executable. Disable this, then run a search of your Windows directory for "*lex*", which will uncover the numerous Lexmark files left behind. The poor un-installation procedure leaves Windows believing Lexmark still has control over printing and deleting these files must be done manually. Finally, and this is a very arduous process, run a search through your registry for, again, "lex". After flipping through many irrelevant entries, delete all keys and classes relating to Lexmark. Reboot and your print subsystem should be free from Lexmark's clutches.