[Brad]

Hey guys and gals,

My old Epson Stylus Color 880 seems to have sputtered its last drop of ink. Thank god, too, because the ink for it was disgustingly expensive. I could have (and probably should have) bought a new printer ages ago and saved with the difference in ink, but alas...

Mostly I'll be printing black and white text documents, but I also occasionally have some color documents or even photos. I'd easily be willing to sacrifice the super-utlra-mega-fine resolution of the pricier "photo" inkjet printers to save on cash, but I still want the option of occasionally printing in color (thus ruling out B&W laser printers).

I'm also not particularly interested in those all-in-one printers that do everything from printing to scanning to faxing to reading three or four different types of memory cards. I won't refuse one if the price is right, but it's just not something I need.

So, what kind of printer would you recommend for home use? I'm (obviously) looking for something that won't cost me an arm and a leg every time I replace the ink cartridges.

On a related note, does anyone have experience buying ink cartridges from these online discount retailers? The prices sometimes seem too good to be true; so, I've always veered away thinking there's some catch.

[RobM]

Hi Brad - can't offer much in the way of specifics other than to say I recently bought an Epson 210R (that's what they call it here in NZ and Aus) 200 series in the States, I think. Great little printer for what it is - I also have a Kyocera laser for greyscale stuff so the inkjet is colour work only.

Epson offer full colour cartridges on purchase (instead of half cartridges, like Canon and HP). I'm still on them after well over 200 full colour dvd's printed and some A4 stuff. I will say that I am biased toward Epson, but that's a whole other story.

The cost of refills is a curse but waddayado ?
My last Epson was totally screwed by me buying cheapo refills so I don't think I'll go down that route again. The ink can coagulate when mixing brands and ruin the print head (black seems to be the worst for this).

Anyways hope that's of some use.

cheers

[holbox]

Just bought (2 months ago) a Cannon Pixma iP3000 printer from New Egg for $65 + 5 bucks shipping (no tax).
We had one Epson printer that would only use Epson ink. High price.
We had another Cannon printer that I've been using cheap cart. from PrintPal ($4.95 - 10% - prepaid - no tax).
The new iP3000 does a fine job. Both printers now use the same ink and work perfectly.
Epson has a chip in them that just wouldn't work with anything but Epson ink.
The newest Cannon printer I just bought is my 4th Cannon in 15 years. All them work great with PrintPal.com ink.

Hell the new Cannon cost just a few $$ more than an ink fill from Epson/

[MCQ]

Personally, I'm partial myself to HP printers, but given that the last couple years Fiorina as CEO may have contributed to a lack of focus in the printing group - I don't know how much their quality has suffered. Ink is expensive though (black isn't so bad, but tri-color is expensive).

The few times I've seen the default samples from the Pixma series in stores, I never liked the text quality - seemed fuzzy to me. People seem to love them for photos though.

I'd suggest maybe a last-gen Photosmart printer if you can find one at a lower price ($100-$150). I have a Photosmart P1100 from several years ago that's great for text printing... decent for color. Even had a duplexer on it. Very happy with that purchase.

[holbox]

The few times I've seen the default samples from the Pixma series in stores, I never liked the text quality - seemed fuzzy to me. People seem to love them for photos though.
[/quote]

I really can't fault the text printing of any Cannon printer that we've owned.
I just finished looking over a bunch of text in all size fonts. I can't see a flaw. Crisp printing.

[Wyatt]

I've always bought HP printers because not only are the printers attractive and of good quality, but the ink is not outrageous.

Side note about the "cheap" online ink: my mom tried to use some once in one of our old printers and ruined the printers. Buy with caution.

[HOM]

Get a laser printer. The amount of money you'll save in ink/toner will more than make up for occasionally having to go get a photo printed out at a camera shop. Some of the places here practically pay you to print your digital photos.

My next printer is going to be a Brother Multi-Function. I had one at my last job and dear god I beat the hell out of it, but it just kept on chugging along. No, I mean I beat the living shit out of it. I would send 10,000 page jobs to it after it had just finished a 5,000 page job. I don't think it was designed to handle such large jobs, but it did it like a champ.

So anyway... get a laser printer. It'll save you a ton of money and grief.

[davebarnes]

Brad,

Take a look at the Samsung CLP-550N (don't look at 500 or the non-N). Color laser for $600-700.
I own this printer. It replaced a Tektronix 740.
This printer is great!
Very quiet.
Works with Windows and Mac OS X.
Ethernet.
Comes will full toner cartridges.
High quality output.

,dave

[Banana]

Others has answered printer part, but as for ink,

what about those kits that you inject inks directly into the cartridges? They are much cheaper. However, never having had a good printer, I actually never got around to trying this kit, so it's collecting dust now.

A cavaet on Epson- I'm told that Epson eats through all inks, even when you're printing black only. My wife swears by HP.

[FFL]

Take a good hard look at HP inkjets (especially the Photosmart series).

Then run away, screaming.

You would not believe how many of those I see getting returned.

On the plus side, I've made some good money off of clients who don't replace them, as their software decides to quit communicating with the printer every couple of months or so.


Get yourself a Canon PIXMA (I'm partial to the 4000).
Or a Xerox color laser (VERY cheap consumables).

[Trumpetman]

I agree with the Canon recommendation. We've got two and the ink is cheap compared to other brands and also has no microchips that prevent refills, declare themselves expired, etc.

I find the text quality fine and I am very snooty about text. My other printer is an HP2100m with 1200 DPI and I have no problem with the Canon output.

Nick

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Banana A cavaet on Epson- I'm told that Epson eats through all inks, even when you're printing black only.

Another two things that I hate about Epson are that the printers refuse to print with the ink low (ie. you can't print until it runs dry) and that if one ink cartridge is "low" it won't print at all. So, if I'm low on color ink and don't want to fork over fifty bucks, I still can't even print simple black and white documents!

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I still haven't made any decisions; so, I'm still open for all suggestions.

[WBG4]

Originally Posted by HOM Get a laser printer. The amount of money you'll save in ink/toner will more than make up for occasionally having to go get a photo printed out at a camera shop. Some of the places here practically pay you to print your digital photos. My next printer is going to be a Brother Multi-Function. I had one at my last job and dear god I beat the hell out of it, but it just kept on chugging along. No, I mean I beat the living shit out of it. I would send 10,000 page jobs to it after it had just finished a 5,000 page job. I don't think it was designed to handle such large jobs, but it did it like a champ. So anyway... get a laser printer. It'll save you a ton of money and grief.

IO agree with this. The old apple laserwriters are tanks and take HP cartridges. Just make sure it has eithernet on board (if it doesn't it won't work with os X. I personally have a LW 16/600 PS i got for free. Before that i had a LWIIg that i put $40 of rollers into other then that it was free. I know someone who picked up 2 or 3 IIg s for like 50 on e bay not too long ago. They are not the speediest things in the world but they are cheap to get and cheap to run

[ast3r3x]

I have a pixma 4000 and it's great. I mostly only use it for images, but I've never had a problem with the text that I've printed. It's awesome for images, prints super quiet.

It's very ink efficient.

[nomorewindows]

I've had maybe a half dozen different printers over the last ten years and Canon wins by far, simply because of the printer cartridge prices. Love the fact that you can buy each color separately. Stay away from anything that has an "all in one" cartridge. (I'm sure you already know that.) It just killed me to know that I had half the red left when the blue ran out and I still had to replace the whole damn thing. As for the running it dry issue, most Canons will spit out more copies if you keep hitting the "resume" key.

I buy my cartridges at Costco, where they sell the black separately from the color cartridges, which is nice, since most people use more black. I have the Canon i960 and the i560s. The color ink tanks are interchangeable, but the black is not, as it is a larger tank for the i560s. The ink cartridges end up being about $10.50 each.