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A Buyer's Guide to Inkjet Printers
An anonymous reader writes "CoolTechZone.com has posted a good writeup on how to select an inkjet printer without falling prey to many of the common marketing gimmicks."
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You shouldn't. Not unless you want to print your photos out, but even then it's probably cheaper to sign up with some place online.
Inkjet printers are a scam, played on a public that doesn't know any better.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Buy a used or re-conditioned HP Laserjet 4* or 5.
Work it like a rented mule and pass it on to your grandkids.
Tell me about it. I work for a printer manufacturing company, and we make virtually nothing on the printers themselves. There is an enormous profit margin on the ink, on the other hand - without it we'd be nowhere. Hence, my company goes to a fair amount of trouble to make sure that third-party stuff won't work properly with our printers (i.e if it works at all you get faded colours).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I bet if enough people started doing this, the manufacturers would relent on ink cartridge prices.
They already know about this. The printers available these days have very little ink in them. It's called a demo ink cartridge.
Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the human race.
The question is, are you someone who prints off a page from Google Maps once/twice a month, and an occasional photo, or are you someone who prints off huge online novels to read later?
Sure, cost-per-page is much lower for a laser - *over the long haul*. Personally, I print less than 100 pages per year. I am lucky if I even go through one color ink cartridge before the ink inside just dries out from non-use.
I don't print enough that I would *ever* be able to recover the much higher initial investment of a laser printer. By the time my cost per page savings would recover the $350 more it would cost me (in say, 10 years), the printer would liekly not even work with the computer anymore.
My all-in-one HP inkjet / scanner / copiter cost only $69 CDN, and has HP supported Linux drivers. I have been using it now for 8 months, and the cartridges are both still 75% full. I am extremely satisfied with my purchase and doubt I would have had any better luck with another printer (although I wish I had splurged and gotten the one with the built in memory card reader, that would be handy).
Fixyourownprinter.com has downloadable technician manuals for just about every printer out there. If you ever have any trouble with your inkjet (ya think?), their manuals will be indispensable.
Found it on del.icio.us/popular a while back.
Buy a color laser printer.
But this isn't ideal for everyone (although I grant you it's probably an adequate solution for many people). My GF is a graphics designer who specializes in print media. We compared many printers about a year or so ago and the inkjets blew away color lasers w.r.t. color accuracy. My mother won't notice if the laser printer makes the sky in her picture a few Pantone shades off from ideal, but stuff like that does matter to someone proofing a brochure before sending it off to the print shop.
Basically, I find anyone who is serious about their color tends to prefer inkjets despite the obvious fact that they have turned into a marketing scam.
Today's dye sub printers can do a full 8x10. The old residential dye sub stuff used to be crap, but dye sub has been used in professional print shops for at least a decade and the residential stuff has now caught up with the "real technology". My wife's a professional photographer and swears by them now. We've got an Olympus dye sub, HP color laserjet, and one of the higher end HP inkjet printers (before we found the dye sub). The Oly by far blows away all of the others in terms of photo quality. If you're just printing occasional photos, the laserjet does just fine... but if you want professional looking photographs I haven't found anything as good as a dye sub.
Especially considering most people use a color inkjet for photos, which Dye Sub is far superior to.
Ahem. 99% of people who are serious about photography and want to (digitally) print at home use inkjets. The do not use dye-sub printers. Think there's a reason for this?
And no, they are not clueless. There are huge discussions on 'net forums about the minute technical advantages of this printer vs that, the comparative advantages of ink sets, etc. etc. There is no real discussion of whether dye-subs are a viable alternative to, say, Epson Stylus Pro R1800 -- because they aren't.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I just bought a photoprinter from HP that claims to print 4x6 prints at a rate "as fast as" about 20 pages per minute. However, a photo (4x6 inches) will print at a rate of one print in about 1 to 3 minutes, based on whether I choose Best or maximum DPI for printing. (How can maximum DPI be better than best?) Even after research, I had to buy based on brand name and advertised specifications, because it is difficult to find evaluations of printers on the internet that actually give useful comparisons.
Before buying the printer I decided against Epson based on the fact that if the printer is not used for a few days (maybe a week or two) the print head can dry and cause extensive cleaning before it works properly.
Also, Epson cartridges have a microchip that may cause the printer to stop operation when it decides the cartridge is empty, even if it is not. (A completely stopped up print head does not allow ink to flow, even during a cleaning cycle.) Printers with the print head attached to the cartridge should be more expensive, but are only slightly so, so even if you should damage the head, they are replaced.
Some companies sell Epson cartridge chip "reset" devices. I have not tried one yet.
If your Epson printer will not clean, you have to discard it or have it repaired at a price that probably is at least half the cost of a new printer. I have found that by filling an old cartridge with water, using a hypodermic syringe (break off the sharp point first) and then running a few cleaning cycles over the period of a few days, the printer can be recovered. Takes time, but seems to always work.
Inkjets can be had for much less, but their built is lousy and often you're better off replacing it with a new printer after the ink runs out. (Not really, because the ink that comes with it is only 1/3 full. Buy printer, one refill and then replace the printer is ideal)
Print quality between my colour laser and my wifes coulor inkjet is mindblowing (in favour of my laser, of course)
Of course, both my wife and me have to print a lot because we're both in education... but that is entirely another story.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Uh...how exactly is this flamebait? It is at best informative, but I was going for funny a bit there. Ye mods! It is indeed a fact that the point of having any sort of article is, ad revenue. Sorry. That's how the real world works. Notice how I didn't say that it was a bad thing or anything inflamatory. Is it flamebait because I called him son? Well, look at his freaking UID. Its not exactly my fault I have nearly half the UID he has. :)
Isn't there anything better you guys could have done with the mod points?
zosxavius photography
One advantage of inkjets that has been pointed out by many on this story is their photo quality compared to color lasers.
This is like saying a port-o-john is better than a pit toilet because it has deodorant in it. Technically true, but it still smells strongly like crap.
If you are a typical consumer that just wants to shove out prints from a digicam, just take your CF, CD-R, SD, whatever to your local drugstore, Wal-Mart, Target, random one-hour photo place, pay them 19 cents a piece, and they will do a much better job than ANY consumer-level inkjet printer.
The photos from a minilab will be more consistent, free of dithering, mostly waterproof, light resistant, and also guaranteed.
The photos from an inkjet mostly fade in sunlight (a few exceptions), are not waterproof, suffer from nasty dithering, and if you screw up, you just flushed your money down the toilet.
If you REALLY want to print out prints at home, then use a home dye-sub. Sony, Kodak, and Olympus make fine dye-sub printers. The prints only cost a little more than inkjet, and they are waterproof, UV resistant, and far higher quality (no dithering).
For non-photo printing, Lasers are superior in every way. Sharper text, cheaper supplies, faster, more reliable, etc.
SirWired
I can't afford to blow that much on a color laser.
Color lasers can now be had for under $300. That's the cost of a decent color inkjet plus two or three sets of ink refills. Are you sure you can't afford that?
For all you slashbots who think the only use for color is photos, you need to stop and ponder the possibility of other uses for printed material before you crap all over my inkjet printer. YOU might not use an inkjet for anything beyond that, but there are plenty of us who do. If you do paper (cardstock) modeling the inkjet is far superior, because that expensive laser toner CRACKS and flakes off if you score or bend it too much (two things you tend to do when modeling anything more than a flat panel). Inkjet printers can even print on plastic card and other structural materials (not to be considered with the heated drum of the laser...) I only wish I could get a good continuous ink system for my HP 842C printer.
I'd love to help you out -- which way did you come in?
That said, if you are trying to print text and spot color graphics, the reverse is true. The best inkjets are no match for a laser in terms of print cost, and the difference in quality for high-saturation graphics is negligible.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I really stunned by the Samsung 550N. I bought one for $430 that does above-average cover prints, has 100Mbit LAN and DUPLEX PRINTING right out of the box. The box advertises the quietness of the print engine - most inkjet printers are louder.
Not trying to be a shill for Samsung, but for anyone who has the room for a laser printer I'd say it's the way to go.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
I agree, but don't think it is worth trying to compete with professional equipment down at the photo lab. If it cost $0.15 or more per print at home and $0.11 at Costco, I'll keep my black laser printer and let someone else own the good hardware. Personally, if I wanted nice color, I'd get one of those wax based plotters.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.