Printer

[Pippa]

I need to buy a new printer. I do not print a great deal, but occasionally I need to do high quality colour printing. I have had a couple of Canon printers in the past, the first one lasted for about five minutes and the second started making all sort of funny lines despite all sort of cleaning, adjusting, etc. I have also an Epson printer but the cartridges are horrendously expensive and as it is getting a bit old now, it is difficult to find cartridges, and I have tried several times the non-Epson ones with not very good result, some of them totally unusable, and leaving a sort of purple colour all over the place.

Ah! and I only need a printer, not a multifunction printer-fax-scanner.

Any suggestions?

[Juanjo]

I need to buy a new printer. I do not print a great deal, but occasionally I need to do high quality colour printing. I have had a couple of Canon printers in the past, the first one lasted for about five minutes and the second started making all sort of funny lines despite all sort of cleaning, adjusting, etc. I have also an Epson printer but the cartridges are horrendously expensive and as it is getting a bit old now, it is difficult to find cartridges, and I have tried several times the non-Epson ones with not very good result, some of them totally unusable, and leaving a sort of purple colour all over the place.

Ah! and I only need a printer, not a multifunction printer-fax-scanner.

Any suggestions?

I do a lot of photo printing and am very happy with my Epson DX 4000 All-in-One ink-jet printer/scanner that cost me about £70 a year ago.

Epson cartridges are expensive but IMHO you get what you pay for. I have tried using compatibles on both this printer and my older Canon. OK for standard B&W printing of letters etc, but total mierda for printing photos- colours run, poor depth and do not dry quickly enough. You can get reasonable prices for Epson originals if you shop around in Internet.

[gtappend]

Hi Pippa,

in my experience, Canon have improved their printers in the last 12 months. The Pixma range does give quite good quality, especially the ones with 2 black cartridges.

However my favourite for a "pure" printer as opposed to a multi-functional is HP. Do you have a any sort of idea how much you want to spend? (PM me that if you prefer)

[greytop]

I gave up with inkjets that kept drying up (HP & Lexmark) due to my low usage rate and if I need photos I stick the files on a memory card and go down to the local print shop. It might be too expensive if you print a lot of photos, but inkjet prices per print are not cheap either.
The HP software was a nightmare too and I've had several long sessions with their help desks. Lexmark never upgraded their drivers to Win7 so I couldn't use that one - although that may have changed.
I replaced both printers with a Samsung 3175 colour laser. Switch it on and it's ready to go in a minute. So far no problem with anything drying up. Its also got a scanner (sheet/flatbed to several file formats including PDF) and acts as a Fax directly to the phone line. There are cheaper models that print only. With light home use the only expenses for many years should be for toner cartridges.

[Pippa]

@ Juanjo: I agree entirely with the total mierda, but I did not think of getting the Epson cartridges off the internet.

@ Greytop: I don´t usually do photo printing off the printer and do it in the local shop, but I need the colour printing as I do my own cards, (Christmas and others) but I also need it for printing on special papers or material for bookbinding. We have a B&W laser printer, but I have been always been told that for colour printing is better injet, is that right?

[richardksa]

I use a relatively inexpensive HP deskjet D1460 model. It has been in daily use for almost exactly two years and has never let me down. The cartridges are not expensive, but that can depend on where you buy them. Funnily enough my local office supplies shop undercuts El Corte Inglés and FNAC and has the added benefit of being two minutes walk away if the ink runs out in the middle of a print run. It does very good photographic printing, but only up to 180 weight paper. Anything thicker and the drive jams.

[jubilee]

We recently got one of the many Canon PIXMA versions, from Canon outlet on ebay and are using cheap compatible cartridges from INKredible ink without problems.

[gary]

(Christmas and others) but I also need it for printing on special papers or material for bookbinding. We have a B&W laser printer, but I have been always been told that for colour printing is better injet, is that right?

Best colour printing I have seen is laser BUT the initial outlay is expensive and you have four toner cartridges (:eek::eek::eek:), I like HP too but the problem with HP is that the colour is all in one cartridge and once the yellow has gone (it always goes first) then you have to buy a new one even though theres loads of blue left.

We have a cheap B&W laser a HP all in one for low quality copying n the like and and a Canon ip1500 inkjet for higher quality stuff - we print photos, CDs, card, paper through it and it has individual colour reservoirs at about £7 each. Works for me...

[gtappend]

I like HP too but the problem with HP is that the colour is all in one cartridge and once the yellow has gone (it always goes first) then you have to buy a new one even though theres loads of blue left.


Actually, that is no longer the case for the high-end HP inkjets.

My personal favourite at the moment is the HP Officejet Pro K5400DN, which has the four colours in separate cartridges. Also, the printheads are not in the ink cartridges, making the cartridges (hopefully) cheaper and also if one of the printheads goes wrong you don't end up throwing away ink.

Not only is the print quality good, but it prints double-sided (duplex) and has a print server (for ethernet cable) built in.

The ink cartridges are available in two sizes, so that if you don't use it that much, you can buy the smaller amount of ink rather than spending more and having it dry up on you. A set of the smaller cartridges costs about 60EUR in Germany, and I've even seen a set of "compatible" cartridges online for as low as 14GBP.

The downside, if there is one, is that this printer has now been around for a while and is getting hard to buy. HP now have Officejet Pro printers in the 8000 range, but I haven't had a chance to try one yet.

[greytop]

@...
@ Greytop: I don´t usually do phot o printing off the printer and do it in the local shop, but I need the colour printing as I do my own cards, (Christmas and others) but I also need it for printing on special papers or material for bookbinding. We have a B&W laser printer, but I have been always been told that for colour printing is better injet, is that right?Yes Pippa - if you need to use special materials then inkjet works. The range you can put in the laser is limited because of the heated finishing rollers - melted plastic coating doesn't mix ;D You can't use glossy paper at all - unless there are some made for laser ones I haven't found yet.

[Pippa]

Many thanks to all for the replies.