Rant/Rave about your color printer?

[Aimeedyan]

We (sigh.) are in the market for one again. I am addicted to digital scrapbooking so a decent quality is big for me, though my HP deskjets have been great in the past so I don't think I need a photo printer or anything to get good quality.

Anyone have rants or raves about their own printer(s)? I think we'll go look tonight.

 

[Wishing on a star]

we have the Canon i560... It was fairly low priced. I like it!!!!
It prints decent pictures. And, boy for regular black and white documents, it is fast!

Other printers are known for guzzling ink... $$$$ I think the HP's are among them. This Canon i560 blew our ancient HP out of the water!

For a higher price range, the Canon i990 ( I think the number is 990) was getting rave reviews when we bought our i560.

 

[Dan Murphy]

I have an HP 7960, very happy with it. I use it only for color work as I have a laser for routine printing.

 

[safetymom]

If you are into scrapbooking you should look at the Epson printers. The printers that use the pigmented ink will give very long lasting prints. There is the R1800 that will print borderless 12x12. Epson also makes a great scrapbooking paper for the printers also. I love my Epson printers.

 

[Disney_1derland]

I truly love my dell all-in-one. Very handy little machine. The thing I like most is that you get high capacity ink cartridges which double your print capacity for only $5 more than the regular size ones. The limiting thing is that you must order your ink from dell. I've gotten over that!

Picture quality is amazing and it's very conservative on the ink. Another thing I like is that you get new print heads with every cartridge. many types of printers the heads are in the printer rather than the cartridge and after a while they get gunky and are hard to clean which impairs your printing ability (or so I've been told)

 

[Wishing on a star]

Hey safetymom,

How do you know which ones are 'pigmented ink'????

Thanks!

 

[safetymom]

The C series 66,86 use 4 inks. The R800,1800,2400 use 7-8 inks. You will see the words durabrite or ultrachrome. That tells you that they are pigment inks.

 

[N.Bailey]

We have an HP Photosmart 8450 and love it. It prints beautiful pictures. If anything were to happen to it (our fault) I wouldn't hesitate getting another one. The ink is a little pricy for it though.

 

[oogieboogie]

I have a Canon i320 and a brother all-in-one. I picked those 2 not only on the basis of quality, but also because the replacement inks are cheap - dirt cheap compared to other brands. The black ink is under $5 online and the colors are $10-$20 per cartridge. Gotta love that.

 

[safetymom]

There is an advantage to having the print head built in. You can get variable ink droplets that you can't with a throw away print head. The permanent print heads are designed to last the life of the printer. You don't replace your tires every time you buy gas do you? Then why pay to replace the print head every time.

There are many printers out on the market so you can pick the one that suits your needs best. You should check to see what the cost per print is and the archival life of the prints. You may save a few cents today but wish in a few years you had spent the money for a printer that was cost effective and the prints lasted a long time.

 

[Dan Murphy]

http://www.steves-digicams.com/printers.html#links

This might help.

As said above, archival, if important, should be taken into consideration. All your top line printers from your top line mfrs, Epson, Canon, HP, etc use archival quality inks today.

 

[safetymom]

Some of the inks are more archival than others. Epson has inks that will last 100-200 years. They are the only company that uses all pigmented inks in some of their printers.

For archival ratings of inks and papers used in printers go to
www.wilhelm-research.com

 

[Aimeedyan]

Well, we ended up buying the Epson Stylus C86 from Epson.com. Refurbished for $75 (compared to $99), free shipping, $20 mail in rebate, and a free ($50) print server so my laptop can print to it. So essentially $55 for it and the server. If it dies in a year, we still have the server. It does have a 1 year warranty attached.

It has a high resolution compared to most others and seems to be pretty good, I've been happy with a $30 deskjet for 7 years now so I'm thinking I'll be impressed with this one, LOL!!

Thanks again!

 

[Brendita]

My DH gave me a (hp psc 2110v all-in-one).
2 years ago for my B-Day.
I love it.
I can print scan & copy all from 1 machine.
I just did my t-shirt transfers on it.
Came out great.
Does a great job with photos.
Been thru a few printers over the years.
I like this 1 the best.

 

[JustMinnie]

I have a Compaq U600, rather old. It conked out a long time ago. The first time I had to change the color cartridge, the stupid thing wouldn't acknowledge the new one. I've never been able to get it to work since, and never bothered to buy a new one.