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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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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.
And so the point of actually reading this guide was ... ?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
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!
I can't get the article, but from experience I know:
Find a supplier of ink before you buy the printer.
(Ink that works and is cheap.)
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
The biggest curse with inkjet/bubblejet printers is that when you want one, they all but give the thing to you, but then charge you 50+ for an ink refill which will run out within a few hundred pages (or less). The companies really pretty much stay in business based on the ink sales.
Buying a "cheap" laser printer is actually much more cost effective. You save a lot more in the long run if you don't mind printing only in B&W. 5000+ pages per toner at about $100 for the toner is a much better deal than $50 for the ink which will likely last you only around 100 pages give or take.
This is the site that last week, had an op-ed up arguing that "loving" Microsoft is OK, and Linux is just the product of some nefarious cabal of hypesters and PR men. Yeah, uh, I don't see me caring about this review of inkjet printers either. One of the things that matters to me is whether I can print to it in Linux, which I kind of doubt they'll be able to handle.
--Matthew
Buy a used or re-conditioned HP Laserjet 4* or 5.
Work it like a rented mule and pass it on to your grandkids.
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Somehow, cooltechzone managed to stay up throughout the "Is it wrong to love Microsoft?" article, but they can't handle the traffic generated by their inkjet printer buyer's guide. Maybe people are RTFA this time.
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:
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).
There are now many ink jet printers on the market that cost $49, which is cheaper than the ink replacement cost.
One way to stick it the manufacturers would be to throw away the printer after it runs out of ink, and buy a new one. This would wreck their business model, since they typically sell the printers at a loss.
I bet if enough people started doing this, the manufacturers would relent on ink cartridge prices.
For me, a major inkjet selection criterion is a printer's ability to be adapted to use continuous inking (without major hacking/drilling/etc.). Screw the printer manufacturers and their stupid ink-based business model.
- ink-system-review.html
Linky linky:
http://www.nomorecarts.com/
http://www.brandonstaggs.com/epson-r200-continous
http://www.atlascopy.com/cfs/
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
- IJPs is an anagram for "jips"!
- If you're like me and only want to print out "The Onion", in color, once a week: by the time the next week rolls around, the inkjet heads have clogged. You waste a sheet or two of expensive paper in finding this out again for the galumpty-umph time.
- If you use the "control panel" to clean the heads you have to put up with 5 minutes of Grandpa-getting-out-of-a-Miata-type groaning coming from the printer. And it wastes a whole boatload of ink in the process.
- If you instead take the printhead to the sink and give it a Sitz bath, you get your fingertips all colored in the process, as you forgot how indelible the ink is.
- Some of the HP IJPs require a 59MB download to install one 37k driver. And 39MB of slow, clunky, and unreliable "Print management" admin software doodads. Which do not want to uninstall themselves.
- The HP installer hasnt heard of virtual LPT ports-- it bombs out if you don't have a real, live, 378h hardware LPT port, even if you wanted to use a USB virtual port.
- Don't buy even slightly past their expiration data ink cartridges-- I thought I was a real winner buying a bunch of HP ones for $1 each cause they were a bit expired. The red ink had magically turned into dark brown, like overnight. Not good if you're printing skin, er, I mean job-related bar-graphs.
- Don't buy one of those refilling kits, just don't.
Instead scarf up some lightly used color laser printer at some local auction. You won't regret it. Oh wait, you will if it needs a new photoconductor belt, $350.Do Not ask me how I learned these things.
If it isn't rated for industrial use, don't buy it.
.jpg files and display them on the TV. Even if the person hasn't got a DVD player, you should be able to connect your DVD player to your VCR with a simple SCART to SCART cable. Just running out of screen space? Increase your number of virtual desktops.
If it's rated for industrial use, but it either doesn't have Linux drivers, or the Linux drivers aren't under an OSI-approved licence, don't buy it -- even if you don't want to use it with Linux today.
If the Linux drivers for your industrially-rated printer were written by a third party, it might be worth buying -- after all, it's a good sign that somebody actually thought it was worth bothering to support.
Bear in mind that you have already managed up to now without an inkjet printer. Investigate all alternatives fully before you buy one. Can you e-mail your files, or host them on some web space somewhere? If you want to show off some photos, try burning them onto a CD-R -- most DVD players will read CD-Rs of
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
At only 50 pages, you are almost better to just print at Kinkos.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
I've owned my little black and white Okidata 10ex LED printer (basically a LASER printer) for more than 5 years and I've replaced the tonor cartridge a couple of times. By now the cost of this printer is a fraction of the cost of buying and maintaining an inkjet printer.
With budget Laser printers on the market these days, even if you have to pay twice the cost of an inkjet printer, for 99% of your printing needs the Laser is the far far better deal. You can get the Samsung 1710ML, for example, at less than $100 on some sales.
I do sometimes need color, and a color laser would be nice, although the colors from such a printer are not good enough for some applications such as photo printing. Photo printing is the one last domain of the ink jet, and probably always will be. But I do that so rarely that taking my photos to walmart to print is the best deal for me.
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).
Buy an expensive printer...
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.
There is no way to purchase a good inkjet. They are slow, unreliable, and the ink is more expensive than gold on a /weight basis. If you do any amount (change cartridges every two months)of printing, a color laserjet is cheaper to own. The exception to this is if you need a multifunction device (fax/copier/printer) in which case a brother ethernet enabled multifunction device is available for $200.
This is to say, if you replace your ink cartridges on 1x/month basis - an inkjet is more expensive than a laserjet. I have several clients who change both the black and color cartridges on a monthly, or bi-monthly basis: $25/chartidges (bulk) x 2 x 6x/yr = $300/year for cartridges. This is the cost of a color laserjet.
Based on the duty cycle of the $100 high capacity cartridges in my Konica Minolta 2430DL, an inkjet cartridge with a capacity of 300-800 pages will cost between $830 and $300. (If we assume that black is 800 pages, and colour 300 pages, you are paying between twice and three times as much for ink)
Further, you get to escape the duties of changing the cartridges and making a mess on a (bi)monthly basis.
If you need a color copier, and a fax - then a multifunction inkjet makes sense. Otherwise, anyone who prints often should get a laserjet.
OH, almost forgot: Yes, Epson inkjets are wonderful for printing photos. However, if you are really serious about printing pictures - a color correction system (~$200) is required and can match your screen to any printer. And some (my)laserjet printers do have pictbridge so you can print directly from the camera. (Without proofing, why?)
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.
Inkjet printers suck. Don't buy one.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I am incredibly surprised that they didn't even remotely talk about things that people are actually confused about-- like whether or not you can replace the ink TANKS without replacing the ink cartidge. Or how long a ink cartidge lasts when NOT printing.
My problem was always that I would not print for 3-4 weeks, then go to print and find out that the head had dried out.
Finally went to laser and haven't been happier.
They should also write an article titled 'How to select a GOOD webserver'. It seems they could use one...
Mod parent up!
I have been using an Epson 1520 for about 5 years now. Very good at printing photos, and being a 4-color unit (not 7 or 15 color), it is cheap to get ink, and continuous ink supplies are available REALLY cheaply.
With people complaining about inkjets, you have to realize that this is the cheapest possible printing technique. Unfortunately, most manufacturers don't pay attention to what people want in a printer, and make their products to sell units -- not to last, or work great, etc.
This is why I bought a used HP 8000N laser printer. Now, I can print all the documents I want, and use my Epson for color photos. I have the best of both worlds!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Reading the posting on this topic, I can see that few- if any- of the posters do much more than dump text to a printer or print the occasional low resolution image they've grabbed from the web. They sound more worried about volume than anything else. They certainly don't seem to worried about the quality of their printing. I work in an industry that lives and breathes it.
Sorry. but unless you're willing to invest in something like a Fiery system or lease an imagesetter, your "cheap" lasers would be laughed out of any decent graphics house. They do run a lot less expensively in volume- and also a lot faster- than an inkjet, but none but the top-end systems come close to quality of output. Even dye sublimation technology has been left far behind- especially when it comes to large-format printing. Try proofing full color tabloid sized images on one of your "better solutions" and see where your investment winds up.
Those expensive inks and ludicrously priced paper stocks nowadays produce a level of quality that amazes any of those that grew up with the first inkspitters. I doubt any of them thought they'd ever produce anything near the near-photographic quality that they do nowadays at the relative pittance of price.
The bad-old-days of film, darkrooms and expensive photo stocks are long gone. Expensive in the long run or not, the inkjets give more value for buck than all but the most expensive, high end equipment, and I doubt you'll see anyone in the graphics industry that will balk at the price of an ink cartridge when they consider the alternatives.
You want to bang out lots of halfway decent printing? Go with the cheap laser printer of your choice. They churn out passable stuff at a much more reasonable per print price. However, don't expect me to feel sorry for you when the color printout of the images you took on your digital camera turn out like crap or the art director at your company laughs at your "printer ready" documentation.
Of course, all this only holds until the next great thing comes out.
Not if he is printing home porn once a week.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
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.
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
Even the infrequent printer like me likes to be able to print off a color picture once in awhile. And a color map is much easier to follow than a B+W one.
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?
Kinko's: "Sir, could you at least put on a bathrobe when we come over to print out your photo...."
I8TheWorm: "Why?"
Karnal
I finally got to breeze through the article. It might as well have been written by an untrained but literate PC superstore salesperson. At first I was hopeful - maybe they'd talk about the things *I* care about, like which manufacturer's printers are most conducive to using alternative, less expensive ink, and which manufacturers are embedding technology (chips with encrypted authenticity codes on the cartridges, date codes, etc.) to make it painful/impossible. But they didn't mention that at all. The article lost all credibility with me right when it began: the first recommendation is to INSIST on a USB2.0 interface! Does anyone here think USB1.1's 1MByte/s transfer rate is any sort of bottleneck in inkjet printing? What a bunch of fluff.
Sorry, but this article wasn't "News for Nerds." It was fluff for technophobes.
Touting Pictbridge, card readers, and little tiny color screens, because "you need not bother booting up your PC every time you want to take a print out"?! That's great for granny who feels threatened by her PC, but for us "nerds", the thought of printing a picture without any processing (denoising, unsharp masking, exposure correction, etc.) is pretty heinous. Besides, most of us have our PCs on all of the time anyway.
The rest of the article was just as intellectually hollow:
Ink cost is a concern. No kidding?
Longer warranties are better than shorter ones and on-site service is better than having to ship the printer out for service. That's news.
Bigger input and output trays are more convenient. More insight from the tech wizards at CoolTechZone...
"Duplex printing enables you to print on both sides of a page." You don't say?
I sure am glad that I have that kind of insightful commentary to guide me -- should I ever want to buy a slow printer that costs more per page than my laser printer and can't do photo-quality printing of color images.