Thread: Which Printer ? recommendations please

I can't really recommend a particular printer, but a few things worth thinking about -

1. Regardless of which printer you get, quite soon you will find a much better one has come on the market for half the price!

2. It will be cheaper, if less convenient to get the photos printed by a store!

3. Seriously, depending on how much printing you do, the cost of the ink cartridges will outweigh the original cost in less than a year. Unfortunately, it seems to be impossible to get the data to determine relative costs between brands or models.

4. If you live in an area of low humidity and dust, or use your printer only every few days, it is preferable to get a printer with the nozzles built in to the cartridges, rather than to get one with the nozzles as part of the printer - if they block up, you need a new printer not a new cartridge.

John

I have owned a number HP and Canon printers over the years. Of the two I reckon Canon have been the pick in terms of reliablity, print quality and ink costs.

As to whether it is best to have the print head nozzels in the cartridge or integrated into the printer. Well I guess everyone has different experiences - my experience leans strongly towards the integrated print heads.

The disposable prints heads built into the ink cartridges like that from HP seem attractive at first sight but I have had better success over the long term with printer integrated heads as used by Canon.

Last thing, if you have not owned an inkjet printer before make sure you get a price on a full set of replacement ink cartridges for the particular printer you are considering. Otherwise you might get a shock come time to buy some.

seriously consider a laser printer - ink can't dry up, simple technology, not much goes wrong... BUT no colour... I got a canon LBP2900 with 2 cartridges (3500 pages per cartridge) with it - $129 about 6 months back.
for home use I figure that will last about 5 years!!

I wanted the injek type printer for printing the odd family photo and printing on blank DVD and CD , I assume the colour lasers would be worth quite a fair bit ? would the laser type printers also allow me to print on my DVD's as well?

I saw this Epson R290 one for sale on net for $108.0 plus $20 cash back,and 2 sets of cartridges ( 6 in ea set ) for $70 .

hmm get a lightscribe DVD burner - that solves the cd/dvd printer problem

Originally Posted by EchiDna

hmm get a lightscribe DVD burner - that solves the cd/dvd printer problem

what he said

with your printing requirements in mind go for anything Epson, cheap to buy cheap cartridges.

FYI you can now buy colour laser printers for about $500 but you can't print onto DVDs with them, the quality is good, printer life is average, cartridges coast about the same as the printer.

Inkjet is fine as long as you print out a colour image say once every 2-3 weeks it should not dry out. You can also buy inkjet printers that print directly onto DVD's look out for that feature. Also look for something that have individual colour, (red, cyan,yellow, black) cartridgers. it will save you $$ in the long run.
Stear clear of HP the carts are $$$$.
ALWAYS ask the price, (and size in ml) or replacement carts before you buy, Epson can be as low as $6-8 HP can be as much as $60

Originally Posted by HangOver

what he said

with your printing requirements in mind go for anything Epson, cheap to buy cheap cartridges.

FYI you can now buy colour laser printers for about $500 but you can't print onto DVDs with them, the quality is good, printer life is average, cartridges coast about the same as the printer.

Inkjet is fine as long as you print out a colour image say once every 2-3 weeks it should not dry out. You can also buy inkjet printers that print directly onto DVD's look out for that feature. Also look for something that have individual colour, (red, cyan,yellow, black) cartridgers. it will save you $$ in the long run.
Stear clear of HP the carts are $$$$.
ALWAYS ask the price, (and size in ml) or replacement carts before you buy, Epson can be as low as $6-8 HP can be as much as $60

In this area Epson printers have proved quite unreliable unless they are used daily. But you are absolutely right about the cost of cartridges - HP can be even more than $60. Unfortunately it seems to be impossible to find the other factor - how much you can print per cartridge.

At least some cartridges can be fairly easily refilled - and as well as the direct saving by refilling these, the fact that it can be done keeps the price down.

Another factor that may affect some people is whether the printer will work with your operating system. If you use Windows (except Vista) you should be OK, although there are possibly a few that don't work with earlier than XP. Most printers will work with Apples, although make sure your version of the operating system is mentioned on the box! If you use anything else, make sure that support is available - the number of printers that work with Vista is rapidly increasing, if you use Linux or BSD, all HP printers work, almost no Canon printers work, and others support varies by model.

John

I bought a colour laser printer a few months ago for my father, all the reasons about cartridge life/cost and print heads were a factor, although he was not interested in printing on CD/DVDs.

The printer was about $350 from officeworks or Harris Technology and came with some ridiculous manufacturer rebate $150-$200.

Great deal. Took me a stupid amount of time to convince him that he'd spent a fraction more on the day, but save all of that in the first month on cartridge costs. Toner cartridges costs are about the same as the more expensive inkjet ones, too.

Cheers
Simon