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."

Comments

Gimmicks?

[Nuclear Elephant]

how to select an inkjet printer without falling prey to many of the common marketing gimmick

The first of which is that you should buy an inkjet printer in the first place.

Re:Gimmicks?

[Nuclear Elephant]

Sorry, that wasn't meant as a troll. But it is beyond me why we're still using technology that's just a slight spin on the old dot matrix printers. Especially in light of newer and still somewhat inexpensive technologies such as color laser ($400) and Dye Sublimation ($250). Especially considering most people use a color inkjet for photos, which Dye Sub is far superior to. It clicks in my head at least that the only reason anyone's using inkjet today is because of the propaganda from manufacturers who make more money on the ink than the printer.

Troll?

[TheRaven64]

I don't know what the moderator who marked this as a troll was thinking. Inkjets are a marketing gimmick (even if they weren't always). They have a significantly higher TCO than an equivalent laser printer, offset by the fact that they have a much lower capital investment cost.

People are conned into thinking that they are cheap because the initial outlay is low, and then they realise later that they will keep paying for it. Maybe for very low volume printing they are good (except that if you use them infrequently the ink in the heads dries up and you have to replace both the print-head and the ink), but for everything else they are a very expensive way of transferring data to paper.

Here is the easy answer

[El Cubano]

how to select an inkjet printer without falling prey to many of the common marketing gimmicks.

Buy a color laser printer. Here is why:

Many prints for low cost (mine was ~US$400 and has 7k page black toner and 5k page color toner for each of C, Y, and M).

If all you want is a printer (i.e., not multi-function do everything device). Laser is the best way to go. I bought my Samsung CLP-550N from NewEgg (I am not affiliated with either Samsung or NewEgg) and have been exceptionally happy. There were cheaper versions, but here is why I got the one I did:

• Samsung has a real Linux installer and Linux support for pretty much all of their printers (though, in my case I did not use it, see below).
• The 550N came with a built in ethernet card
• It speaks PS level 3 (this is why I did not need their installer, as it speeks native PS).
• It has a builtin duplexer
• the CPU is 266 MHz and it has 128 MB of RAM
• It is exceptionally quiet
• Setting it up with CUPS took about 15 seconds. Much easier that when my father visited and needed to print something from Windows (Windows wanted the install CD for drivers, which he had not brought with him, so we had to hunt down drivers on the net).

Seriously, just the built in duplexer and laser alone would be a deal at US$400. The builtin ethernet and extra CPU and RAM were basically a bonus. Not only that, but the quality is better than that of other inkjets I have seen.

THe only down side: you need to purchase special laser quality photopaper. Inkjet photo paper can melt when it hits the the 180 degrees C drum (or so I am told).

Don't knock inkjet.

[antifood]

I am seeing alot of comments on how inkjet printers "suck", and that laser is the way to go. Well I am sorry, this is not always the case. Sometimes people need quality, and by quality I mean something a laser printer are incapable of providing. I have yet to see a laser printer that can provide the quality of say... even an Epson stylus 2200. I mean sure, if all you're doing is printing 72 dpi webpages, by all means get a cheap laser printer. But don't snuff off inkjet because you're not taking advantage of it's true worth: print quality. Now as far as inkjet printers go, I am a huge fan of the 4000 7600 9600 stylus lines (they have recently upgraded these using another tone of gray, but I haven't used them yet). Throw in a good RIP, like Colorbyte's Imageprint and you have some absolutely stunning prints. Now of course these printers are... considerably more expensive than what most folks are willing to spend on a printer, but they are out there and they print beautifully. So ya, high end? Epson definitely.