Tom's Hardware Benchmarks Inkjet Printer Paper

An anonymous reader writes "We all know that the specs of your inkjet printer, driver settings, and ink cartridges can make a big difference in the quality of your prints. But the cheapest and simplest aspect of printing can also have a big impact on the final quality: the paper. This short article is an interesting read, the author actually found ways to 'benchmark' inkjet printer paper."

Comments

Inkjet?

[Anonymous Coward]

People are still taken in by this scheme?

Re:Inkjet?

[WiiVault]

People that need color printing for only an occasional document find benefit in inkject, especially if they print off an random photo here and there. But for B&W use only obviously laser is the way to go. Still some people just don't print much and need color only every now and then. The thought of having 2 separate printers for those people doesn't make sense, nor does buying an expensive color laser.

Re:Inkjet?

[Spy Handler]

yeah what a fraudulant scheme... i mean, who would want to print photographs on a inkjet when you got dot matrix and laser, right?

Re:Inkjet?

[h4rr4r]

No one. It makes poor quality prints and costs more than having good quality ones made. Go look what your local place that prints photos costs, it is amazingly cheap.

Re:Inkjet?

[Dyinobal]

I'd rather not run the risk of being arrested.

Re:Inkjet?

[h4rr4r]

Perhaps you should stop taking pictures of illegal acts.

Re:Inkjet?

[Bing Tsher E]

Who would want to print photographs on an inkjet when the drugstore less than a mile away can print it on real photographic paper? And for less money, once you factor in all the partial ink cartridges you will be throwing away if you're actually serious about printing photographs on an inkspray printer.

Re:Inkjet?

[h4rr4r]

Then get the color printed some place else. The drug store will do proper photo prints for $0.10/each. On real photo paper with real photo printing. Not some cheap inkjet smudgy mess.

Re:Inkjet?

[swalve]

If you print on photo paper with non-generic ink, you can hardly tell the difference. You will NEVER get a laser printer to print a photo that looks that good.

Re:Inkjet?

[Opportunist]

There's a copy shop downstairs. No matter how "cheap" you could print with your inkjet, they're cheaper.

So unless you're printing pictures that you don't want anyone to see, this is the obvious better choice.

Re:Inkjet?

[Opportunist]

who would want to print photographs on a inkjet when the print shop downstairs prints in better quality and at roughly the same cost/picture.

Re:Inkjet?

[Opportunist]

Then I would refrain from printing those pictures either and keep them stored encrypted on a hard drive that you can easily bang against the next wall if the police kicks down your door.

Re:Inkjet?

[hjf]

Ah, I was just waiting for this comment. I have news for you: the "local placethat print photos" is just amazingly cheap. It's not always great.

Photo printing, done right, gives perfect results. 1) An incredible gamut (more than you can get out of your inkjet); 2) extremely long life photos 3) paper that won't turn yellow or degrade.

But in local, cheap photo shops, this is not the case.

1) The gamut comes because of the printing system. A properly calibrated minilab (that means once a week at least, though it can go for months with no calibration and still do acceptable output) has no issues *printing* the correct gamut. The problem is the chemicals needed to develop the paper. Remember, it's regular, chemical-based printing. After a certain amount of square meters developed, the chemicals *need* to be changed. Cheap photo shops get away with adding some chemicals (Replenisher) to the solution that extends its life a little - which is fine and acceptable. It's made by the manufacturer and under certain conditions it will work just as good. But often, these guys at photo labs keep adding the chemicals until all you have is a useless liquid that won't develop anything and we're back to 1980s colors, and only then, they will change the developer. Respectable shops can change the developer and other chemicals as needed - but they charge more than the 1-hour lab at the mall.

2) the long life of the photo comes from proper developing. Because of the destructive process used to develop photos ("ink" is removed from the paper, not added to it, like in the Kodachrome process, which lasts forever), if not done properly, the chemical reaction keeps going for years after the photo is developed (that's why photos fade). There are two steps: stopping and washing, that need to be properly done, in order to actually stop the reaction. If you remove the photo from the stopping bath (or if it's cold, old, contaminated, etc), or don't properly wash the print, the chemicals will continue affecting your print for years.

3) photo paper is not regular "wood fibre" paper, which would disintegrate in all the liquids it needs to be processed in. It's either resin-coated or polyester. Polyester won't turn yellow, and it's not food for bugs, among other benefits.

So, try to develop your photos at a respectable lab.

And for that one-off print you want to give grandma of the kids playing with her that day, the inkjet on photo paper (especially a 6-color epson - even better if 9-color) is much more practical than driving to the lab and having just 1 print developed.

Re:Inkjet?

[hjf]

You laugh, but in some countries (apparently, the UK), trying to print a photo of your 2-year-old playing in the bathtub can get you arrested.

Re:Inkjet?

[hjf]

Cause of this: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2188752&cid=36257328

betcha didn't know that.

Re:Inkjet?

[mdf356]

My kids like to print out color stuff from the web. They don't care if it's photorealistic. For that matter I rarely print stuff at home (or at work) and I don't need it to look awesome either. So yeah, there's still a good reason for some people to have an inkjet printer.

Re:Inkjet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Head over to a pro photo lab, then. If what you're doing is legal, your chances of being arrested are nearly non-existent. The pro photo lab folk are used to erotic stuff, artistic nudity, and naked baby photos. They usually know the law really well. On top of that, they'll even give you their printer profile so you can make your prints match what you see on the screen.

Re:Inkjet?

[hjf]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2188752&cid=36257328

Also, inkjet is always more expensive than the print shop downstairs, even after you print enough photos (a few hundred) to pay for the printer - unless you use a CISS but it's hard to find quality inks. Right now I use a german brand (OCP) in generic chinese paper (60cm wide roll) and I'm simply amazed at the results. But it takes just too much work:
1. Check if your printer driver lets you print in color managed (ICC) mode. Choose Adobe RGB, and disable any post processing at driver level
2. Make sure your monitor is calibrated, or at least, it's configured for 6500K white. The sRGB function should work relatively good.
3. take photo in adobe RGB, if you have a pro camera; or convert to it from sRGB, if you have a consumer camera.
4. Make sure the gamma setting on the printer is right
5. make sure you're setting the right paper kind in your printer "Ultra High Quality Super Gloss Eternal Archival Pixie Dust Photo Paper", or some other silly name.
6. Print, and see if you got it right.
7. Repeat 6 when you figure out which of the other 6 steps you screwed up.
8. Repeat everything again when you notice you forgot to enable "borderless printing"

Good luck if using alternate brands of paper and ink. You can have them profiled for a few bucks, if your printer driver lets you load ink and paper profiles, and save a lot. But for the odd print, stick with original ink and the manufacturer's paper.

Re:Inkjet?

[fast turtle]

I switched to laser because the cost was far less then what an Inkjet ran us in ink. As an example, I've got an HP1600Color Laser that cost $400 when new, and I'm still operating on the original toner cartridges after 4 years. If I'd been using an Inkjet, I'd have replaced the cartridges every month simply from lack of use causing them to dry out at an avg cost of $40 per cart. That's 48 months worth for 300 or 1900+ for and inkjet.

Re:Inkjet?

[Anonymous Coward]

^^^This is the motherfucking shit right there. I'm glad somebody finally said it.

Even colour lasers are cheap enough now that inkjet just doesn't make any sense these days no matter what kind of user you are. It's a total sham exploiting people who don't know any better.

Re:Inkjet?

[Grishnakh]

Exactly right. Very few people ever mention the fact that you have to replace those inkjet cartridges every month whether you use them or not. The technology is utterly stupid, except for a few exceptional cases (like doing extremely high-volume printing with one of those continuous-flow ink systems).

You know there's something wrong when there's a store on every block that does inkjet cartridge refilling.

My wife is an ex-legal secretary, and has a bad habit of printing all kinds of stuff that doesn't need to be. But with my HP LaserJet 2300 and remanufactured cartridges available on Ebay for $25 each and printing 5-6000 pages, it still takes 9-12 months for me to need to replace the cartridge. $30/year for toner is pretty easy to swallow, but if we were using an inkjet, I'd be replacing carts every week or so for that same cost, adding up to a lot of money (most inkjet carts are lucky to print 500 pages).

As for color lasers, you can get low-end ones for around $200 now, maybe less. They seem to suck, however, because the cartridges are tiny, and the black one is just as small as the color ones, but they're still a much better deal than an inkjet. In fact, for the price, it'd make sense to have a color laser just for color printing, and a dedicated B&W printer for regular printing, since lasers don't have to worry about ink drying out from disuse.

Re:Inkjet?

[realityimpaired]

In fact, for the price, it'd make sense to have a color laser just for color printing, and a dedicated B&W printer for regular printing, since lasers don't have to worry about ink drying out from disuse.

That's what we are doing in our network.... the colour laser is much higher end than the basic entry level, because it actually does get used to publish a quarterly newsletter for about 1500 members of a local charity (and for the cost of one of the quarterly prints we were able to buy the printer and all the toner for the print, and each subsequent print we have saved $600 over the print shop cost), but other than that, all the printing gets done on a b&w laser except the rare occasions that I want to print something in colour... which is exceedingly rare. :)

Haven't used an inkjet in almost a decade. Went without colour printing for years because of exactly the reason the GP said, but when colour became an option, I did exactly what you suggest. :)

Re:Inkjet?

[sortius_nod]

I actually found it cheaper to run a colour laser printer. $350 3 years ago and it still has 80% toner. It's a network printer and installs quicker on OSX/Linux than Windows.

In contrast, my $80 Inkjet printer was costing me over $100 every time I went to use it because thinks had dried out from lack of use. A colour laser can be sitting there for months turned off and after a page or two to knock the dust and toner that's settled out, it's printing as good as the day you turned it off.

Inkjets are a scam, they were touted as being a cheap way of printing. Yes, they seemed to be at first, when your ink carts were only $10. Now they are $50 for blacks usually, $60 for a colour set (that's here in Australia). In contrast, when I do eventually need toner (I can't see it happening before the printer dies as it's a home printer), it's going to cost $110 per colour (CMYK). I probably won't buy new toner, I'll probably end up getting a newer, cheaper model and having mine recycled.

There's no reason to waste your time with an inkjet printer at all, unless you're just buying it for the scanner or faxing facilities, even then you can get a decent scanner cheap enough.

Re:Inkjet?

[Grishnakh]

the colour laser is much higher end than the basic entry level, because it actually does get used to publish a quarterly newsletter for about 1500 members of a local charity (and for the cost of one of the quarterly prints we were able to buy the printer and all the toner for the print, and each subsequent print we have saved $600 over the print shop cost)

Yes, in general it seems that the higher-end and more expensive your laser printer, the lower (sometimes dramatically) your consumables cost is. The $200 color laser is good if you rarely print anything at all, as a set of replacement carts is probably > $100 and run out after 1-2000 pages, but if you're doing much printing at all, it's worth it to spend more on your printer. Besides, unlike those infernal inkjets, you don't have to worry about the ink drying out, so even if you get some giant office printer with 5000-sheet bins, you won't lose anything by it sitting there except power consumption (the big printers seem to have higher standby power consumption).

Re:Inkjet?

[ChrisMaple]

There are so many errors in your post I hardly know where to begin

No photo process of any type that relies on broadband white light passing through or reflecting off the produced image can be "perfect": this is just the spectral limit of chemical compounds. Replenishers don't extend solution capacity a little. When used at manufacturer's recommendations, they extend it many times. Kodachrome is not forever, it is one of the worst processes for resistance to fading from exposure to light. The image in Kodachrome is formed by three developers each of which forms a particular color when acting on exposed silver halide. Other silver based color processes form an image using a color-coupling developer which reacts with exposed silver in each layer, forming colored dyes with the chemicals embedded in each particular layer. Truly archival color images require different processes, such as gum-bichromate or the azo dyes of the ilfochrome (cybachrome) process. The causes of image degradation vary by process, but it is true that generally speaking chemical purity (and freshness) and good washing are necessary. Some photo paper is still wood based, but modern photo paper is easier to use and easier to get long-lived results. Some inkjet printers use pigments instead of dyes, and (generally speaking) pigments provide much better longevity than dyes.

Re:Inkjet?

[russotto]

who would want to print photographs on a inkjet when the print shop downstairs prints in better quality and at roughly the same cost/picture

Because they don't. Prints from the print shop look like crap, and they charge out the wazoo for anything bigger than 4" x 6". Prints on the Canon Pro 9000 are great if expensive. Prints from mpix are also great and similarly priced, but the turnaround time is much greater.

Re:Inkjet?

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is relevant to my interests. Posting AC since I spent some mod points on this topic.

Can you mention what ink jet printer you are using? I recently purchased a DSLR and am getting into photography. I thought it would be fun, down the road, to purchase something like a Canon Pixma Pro9000 to make large format prints at home.

Re:Inkjet?

[Ihmhi]

I don't give a crap if it's photorealistic either. I give a crap when it works out to something like, what, $1.75-$3.50 a sheet? You get maybe 200 sheets of paper out of an inkjet cartridge, and they're usually $35 at the cheapest.

Re:Inkjet?

[TechNit]

As a working professional photographer I can easily vouch for the quality of high end inkjet printers such as the Canon Pixma line. The real key to success in using one of these printers is going to the effort of color calibrating your computer monitor.

Buy this video: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/camera-print.shtml

I am in no way associated with the owner of the above site. Trust me it will be money well spent to get you on your way with successfully printing your images in a predictable/repeatable manner!

Remember folks - not all injet printers are created equally! The crappy ones really are crappy and a waste of money. The high end inkjet printers for photographers produce stunning results and will outlast previous wet darkroom prints.

Re:Inkjet?

[hjf]

I have two printers. One is an A4 Epson Stylus Photo R220. I recommend epson because the ink is cheaper than HP's (Epson's print head is in the printer, not in the cartridge). The "Photo" in this case means two things: it's got 6 colors (CMYK + Light cyan + Light magenta. For some reason, light cyan goes away twice as fast as the other colors), and most important: the driver lets you use color profiles. This is a big thing - it's like owning a camera with M (full manual) mode vs a cheap "AUTO" camera. You need this for a fully color-managed workflow. Well, except the monitor, which, unless you get an HP DreamColor, won't be able to go beyond sRGB.

My other printer is an A3+ HP K8600. This one is a "Business Inkjet" printer. It's great for printing text (HP inkjets are much better than Epson in this regard, and it hasn't changed since the Stylus 440/DeskJet 692C from the mid-90s), but it SUCKS for photos. This is not a photo printer. It can print photos but the colors don't come out right, it's grainy (the Epson Photos have more DPI), but most important: it doesn't support color management. All is printed as HP "RealLife Enhancement". You don't want this for photos. Also, the HP DOESN'T use the black ink on photo paper. It's a thing of dye-vs-pigment ink (I don't know which is which, and I don't care). The thing is, HP business black ink doesn't stick to photo paper. I tried - it dries and it's just black dust. Epson black sticks to photo paper just as well as the other colors. HP makes black by squeezing half your C, M and Y carts in every print. The resulting black is terrible - greenish brown.

I mentioned "photo" and "business" printers. Epson has another line (maybe HP does too, I haven't checked), I think they call it "Artisan". 9 cartridges (includes grey and another black and yet another black for matte finish). These are A3 and larger, and damn expensive. They're expensive to maintain too, and you only get the intended colors if you're using Epson ink and Epson paper.

If you're just trying to have "fun", I'd recommend that you get the one of the Epson "Photo". Don't go with the Artisan just yet. Or maybe not. If you got a Canon 1D or Nikon D3, go for the Artisan (hell, if you have a $7K camera just for fun, you're loaded, go continuous tone!). If you have a Nikon D3/5/7000 or Canon Rebel, go for the Photo printer. Get the Artisan when someone is actually paying for your photos and you do your own exposition.

Or better yet: don't spend your money on a printer at all. Get GEAR. You will be needing, in this order:
a 35mm f/1.8 or less lens. Learn composition and take pics with low light.
a 50-200mm, or 70-300, to go out taking photos of birds and stuff
a tripod, when you realize that, unlike the 35mm it's fucking hard to hold a 300mm steady by hand
a flash, with remote trigger, when you want to give your photos a "pro" look (only when you get this one you will understand why they call it "photoGRAPHY")
a flash stand and umbrella, when you get tired of bouncing at the ceiling
another flash, stand, and umbrella
a few more small flashes. yes. you will be going crazy with flashes. see strobist.blogspot.com
a macro lens, or extension tubes, diopters, bellows, and other macro gear
a soft box (this one you can DIY)
a ring flash
maybe by now it will make sense to invest in a printer. but there's so much more you can get like:
background stands
gaffer tape - lots of it
paper backgrounds
fabric backgrounds
more lenses!
studio flashes (yes, more flashes)
more and bigger umbrellas
soft boxes
another camera

Don't worry about the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). This is where the 35mm f/1.8 comes into play: get some pics of your kid at head level (you will need to crawl if you have a toddler. Protip: you will get much more interesting shots at waist, knee or even floor level, than eye level), set your camera to Aperture Priority and go all the way down to 1.4, "Vivid" color and white balance to a higher point to get a warmer image. Snap. You

Re:Inkjet?

[hairyfeet]

No shit. my oldest got an inkjet thrown in with his new laptop he got for college, and being the "hates to waste things" type tried to actually use it. Blew through a good $70 in a month. I calmly went out and found him a nice B&W laser on the net WITH a 5000 sheet toner PLUS a 15,000 and a 13,000 toner carts thrown in. Final cost? a hair over $100. The laser cost slightly more than he blew through in a month trying to feed the inkjet and after 6 months of printing constantly for class he has yet to go through the 5K, much less even open the 13k and 15k carts.

When you look at even the color laser printers the prices are low enough the insane inkjet cart prices just don't make sense. I have a brand new inkjet given to me by a customer who didn't know better and got a laser after I pointed out the price difference, and as soon as the black ink cart runs out it'll be headed to the dump or to my engineering buddy who likes to strip stuff for parts like gears. If you are printing so little you think an inkjet would work I can promise you you'd get better results simply having your printing done at Walgreen's or Wally World, for everyone else B&Ws start at like $40 refurb and you can often find color lasers like this wireless model for $150. Inkjets are like floppies, once upon a time they made sense and now they are just pointless designed for the dump ripoffs. The only time I recommend an inkjet anymore is when someone needs a cheap scanner/fax I tell them to get an all in one and simply use the ink up and then keep the scanner/fax. IMHO that is pretty much the only time having an inkjet makes any sense anymore, as the all in ones are cheaper than buying two devices.

Re:Inkjet?

[Opportunist]

Uh... I cannot second that. The people who happen to have a print shop right in my apartment building (ground floors here usually house some kind of office, which happens to be a print shop for me) are quite good at their job, they make you feel like they enjoy working on your pictures and the quality is by some margin superior to anything I or any layman could produce. And comparing their cost to photo printers (trust me, I did), I ended up with the realization that it's cheaper, simply because if they fuck up and produce a failure, it's their money, not mine.

Re:Inkjet?

[asdf7890]

I actually found it cheaper to run a colour laser printer. $350 3 years ago and it still has 80% toner. It's a network printer and installs quicker on OSX/Linux than Windows.

Be careful of some particularly cheap colour laser printers if you are likely to print a lot though - the price per page (what-ever page you are talking about: b/w business text, colour charts or full-page photos, ...) is steadily rising at that part of the market especially when it come time to replace the drum(s) and such, and some of the inkjet tricks have crept in (the first set of carts that come with the machine being half full or less, for instance). Also I've seen really cheap models that produce noticable intermittent banding in some colour output.

My colour laser (which replaced a B/W laser and InkJet pairing just over three years ago) works out noticeably more expensive per page in consumables than the ones at work, but they cost five times a much to buy initially. It is still considerably cheaper than running an inkjet, for any amount of output, but the way the market is going some manufacturers might find a way to "fix" that on their cheap models - some are already noticeably worse than mine. Essentially avoid anything explicitly sold as a "home" printer and you'll get much better value in the long run (and unlike many inkjets that break down completely fairly quickly, "long term" tends to be a valid period to consider for laser/LED machines). Mine is targeted at "small workgroup/office" and didn't cost much more then the "home" models on the market at the time. The chunky toys like we have at the office are what you want if you have extensive printing needs (but for home users the initial expense will probably far outweigh the reduced running costs).

Though even if the real cheapies do start to approach parity with the dreaded inkjet market on consumables (which they might in a couple of years, unless inkjet ink costs are rising by the same factors of course: it is a while since I've priced up anything in that market), the other advantages would still exist: good quality output without paying 15+pence per page for high quality coated paper, usable duplex without even more expensive paper, fast operation with more-or-less honest speed claims in marketing (my laser claims 16ppm for b/w output, over a long run I clocked it at more like 13ppm, mainly as it pauses for a short while every now and then, my last inkjet claimed 20ppm and couldn't even feed blank papar through that fast and even "fast/draft" output was more like 4ppm), being able top leave it idle for a few weeks without having to waste 20% of each cart running the head clean operation, and so forth.

There's no reason to waste your time with an inkjet printer at all, unless you're just buying it for the scanner or faxing facilities, even then you can get a decent scanner cheap enough.

There are a few good inexpensive (again: check for reviews first and generally go for "inexpensive" over "dirt cheap") all-in-one scanner/printer/copier/fax machines that use toner-plus-laser/LED printing rather than spitting ink. Though I still tend to recommend separate units unless the user is going to make much use of the "operate as a fax/copier without needing the computer powered on" option - you tend to get a better scanner and a better printer for not much more money that way and if one breaks down you don't need to replace both.

Re:Inkjet?

[Cederic]

Sadly yes, that's happened.

There are also perfectly legal photographs that would never lead to arrest that you may nonetheless not want printing in public,

Re:Inkjet?

[terjeber]

My color printer at home will, since it is properly calibrated and all my photos are RAW images, print images at significantly higher quality than the photo shop doing "real photo printing" - that is unless I engage one of the high-end shops that properly calibrate their printers. I am not quite certain when you last used an inkjet printer, but it's almost a decade since they printed "cheap smudgy mess".

Don't forget, the photo printer at your local store is calibrated to the lowest common denominator. Badly lit shots stored as highly compressed JPEG junk. I don't know of any serious photographer today that doesn't print his own stuff unless he needs to do mass-printings. The majority of them use ink-jet today. Sure, they do not use the $249 Epson from Amazon, but even that one is probably better than the average photo store on typical prints (if operated by someone who knows what they are doing)

Many I know use the Pixma Pro series. Slightly more than the run-off-the-mill Epson/Canon but not excessively so. And, as I said, with higher quality than Wall Mart.

Re:Inkjet?

[terjeber]

BZZTZ. Wrong. If you invest a modest amount of money in an ink-jet today it will print at a better quality than your local place. For me, as an enthusiast, at significantly better quality. The local shop has a printer that is calibrated for badly lit, highly compressed JPEGs, and good photos come out looking like sh*t. That is, of course, unless you go to a shop where the guy running it knows what he is doing. Not going to happen at WalMart.

Re:Inkjet?

[terjeber]

I would say "amen" to all of the above and recommend making sure you get a printer so that your wife can hang some of the images on the wall. That makes a huge difference. Make sure she gets them framed properly. Also, if you get a printer capable of larger prints, that is better.

As to the list - if the $1500 for the 35mm 1.4 prime is a little on the high side, you can get very, very good results with a 50mm 1.4 too, at about 1/3 of the price. You just have to move a little further away. Heck, if you are a Canon person, even the $100 50mm 1.8 is going to blow you away if you are used to the kit lens. Shooting with primes also makes you a better photographer, since you learn that you have to move your body to shoot. Moving your body seems to engage the brain a little more :-)

Re:Inkjet?

[hjf]

Yes, forgot to mention that. For some reason, the 50mm 1.4 is much cheaper than the 35mm. It's just that 50mm is a bit long for indoors. But you're right, a newbie shouldn't be shelling out $1500 for a lens.
No idea about Tamrons, Sigmas or anything. I only have the nikon cheap lenses (the 18-55 kit and a 55-200 that's $150 or so). Maybe there is a cheaper 50mm 1.4. I wouldn't go too crazy for quality as a normal prime lens is almost foolproof. Unless someone put plastic elements in it, any brand should work excellent. Don't worry about multicoat, nano coating, extra-low dispersion glass, fluoride, etc. Just get the cheapest 35 or 50 1.4 (which is compatible with your camera's AF). A used one should work great.

Re:Inkjet?

[Coren22]

For occasional printing, you are far better buying a color laser. Inkjets will dry out if they aren't used often enough, and toner never dries out.

I picked up a Brother color laser printer with wireless and wired network for $300 around the Christmas deals, so they really aren't that expensive anymore. Laser printers can also be refilled without the manufacturer giving you shit...

Re:Inkjet?

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck that, i don't need pictures, i can just look at shit

Re:Inkjet?

[bfields]

I switched to laser because the cost was far less then what an Inkjet ran us in ink.

And I always thought that was the absolute rule too, so when I researched my most recent printer purchase I was surprised how much price-per-page varied within the two categories--some inkjet printers are reported as quite cheap to run, and some lasers quite expensive--and the printer I ended up with was an inkjet for which consumer reports claimed around $.02/page for black-and-white text (if I remember correctly--I tried to check that just now on their website and found they'd switched to using a monthly cost based on average home use).

Re:Inkjet?

[chill]

Amen!

I have a Brother HL-2227DW, monochrome laser, built-in wireless, wired ethernet and DUPLEX printing that cost me $120. The "starter" toner cartridge that came with it lasted me a year.

If I need a color print, I take a USB with the file to Kinkos or the local UPS Store.

Re:Inkjet?

[tzanger]

I call bullshit. I have long preferred laser but my 3 year old $200 Canon Pixma MP530 not only does duplexing and has ADF for scanning but the ink tanks are refillable. I put new tanks in it maybe once every 3-4 months, at a total cost of $45 for all 5 tanks. A colour laser that did duplexing would have cost me a good deal more than $400 today, let alone 3 years ago, and I'd still have to buy a scanner with ADF for what, $50 used off of ebay.

You can tell by my use (new tanks 3-4 times a year) that I don't print a whole lot, yet the heads have never needed cleaning. I just wish it did hole punching and binding. :-)

Re:Inkjet?

[evilviper]

Yes, in general it seems that the higher-end and
more expensive your laser printer, the lower
(sometimes dramatically) your consumables
cost is. The $200 color laser is good if you rarely
print anything at all, as a set of replacement
carts is probably > $100 and run out after
1-2000 pages, but if you're doing much printing
at all, it's worth it to spend more

Maybe that is generally true, but there are plenty of exceptions. My old Samsung CLP-300 for example works out to less than a cent per page. The black toner is about half a cent per page.
http://www.123inkjets.com/Samsung/Compatible/Laser-Toner/Black/CLP-K300A/1230-Product.html

Don't expect even an expensive business printer to be any cheaper than that...

What you get from a high end business class printer isn't cheaper consumables, it's hassle free operation. They'll crank out thousands of pages before there is a jam, and then, they might still auto recover from it. Meanwhile, for the home user, an occasional mis feed isn't a big deal.

Business class printers also blow past home printers in speed and duty cycle, but that's almost incidental. And these days, a low end laser is probably faster than you could want, unless you're literally keeping multiple laser printers fully utilized around the clock.

Re:Inkjet?

[Anonymous Coward]

You took your photos in RAW. Big deal. It doesn't matter in this comparison. You "develop" (demosaic, white balance, apply a gain curve, etc) these photos in the same way, whether you use your inkjet or your local Walmart's Fuji Frontier minilab.

And you know what? You can have your photos developed at Walmart from TIFFs, have all the "optimization" turned off, and use an ICC profile. Doing this, you're probably going to get better results than your Pixma Pro.

Why wouldn't someone find a way to benchmarkpaper?

[GreatBunzinni]

A benchmark is a fancy word to describe a process where a set of items are evaluated objectively based on pre-defined parameters and following a standardized set of procedures. To put it shortly, benchmarking is a process to determine the best option.

Knowing this, why is it so odd that someone found a way to test paper and determine what's best for a given application? Does timothy actually believe that only computer parts can be evaluated by potential buyers?

Re:Why wouldn't someone find a way to benchmarkpap

[Hatta]

I'm really glad they did this. I've been getting terrible frame rates from my usual printer paper.

Razors?

[spun]

People are still taken in by this scheme?

I believe the Discworld character Samuel Vimes had something to say regarding this "scheme." Being poor, he had to buy cheap shoes that wore out quickly and ended up costing him more over the long run, but he simply could not afford the more economical option because of the higher up-front costs. So yes, people are still being 'taken in' by this scheme because, being poor, they don't have any other real options. Luckily, every poor person is to blame for their own poverty and so we can continue to look down are noses at those inferior folks whose lack of options are their own damn faults.

Re:Razors?

[artor3]

Ah yes, the "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness. To quote:

"A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."

Emphasis his. See also: payday loans, rent-a-center, reasons why the so-called "fair tax" is anything but.

Re:Razors?

[Osgeld]

yea but they would be in current style and much less stinky =)

Re:Razors?

[roman_mir]

Poor people are to blame for their poverty in current society, as they are a voting block, which demands bread and circuses paid by others, and the others end up being those, who actually do provide society with businesses (jobs), products and services, that make the society wealthier.

The 19 century USA gained so much wealth because of high levels of innovation and production based on capitalism and mostly free market.

My point is that cheap and plentiful boots are not a function of government intervention into the incomes of those, who actually do create products and services, but it is the function of those who create products and services. The more of those people are, the more products and services compete for the same money, this drives up efficiency and drives down the costs, and that's why USA had deflation in 19 century, which caused products to become cheaper and at the same time created huge amount of competition, which based on gov't idea that deflation is 'bad' is a paradox, but it is not, it is the idea that deflation based on competition is 'bad', that is wrong.

Get the businesses to compete not in the halls of government offices, but in the market for the customers' money, and you get more and more wealth, which is literally products, such as boots, and you get them cheaper and cheaper.

Get the government into that, start insuring businesses/individuals with government promises, start printing fiat, start living beyond the means, start borrowing and create inflation to write off the debt, and what you'll get is less and less investment, because savings get wiped out, and you get capital flight, which means production flight, and then you are left without wealth and so you are left without cheap good boots.

Re:Razors?

[Cryolithic]

Ehh I've got karma to burn on OT. The problem with the idea of free market competition is today's market. The invisible hand doesn't work when you have huge corps that can use economics of scale and pure financial clout (I'll sell my shoes at a loss for years just to stop little guy X from getting a foothold (pun intended)) to kill competition. The job creators (small to medium sized business) are unable to compete with the big players and can *not* get started to a point where they could.

Re:Razors?

[Grishnakh]

The problem with this theory is that it completely neglects other options that poor people have. The biggest omission is the used market. If you can't afford a good new item, and the cheap new items are that bad, then you look at the used market.

While used shoes are a bit of a stretch, with many luxury and high-end goods, the rich people who buy them get tired of them early (earlier than their reasonable lifespan) and toss them so they can buy the newest, fancier model. That's why it's possible to get yourself a luxury car like a Lexus for the same cost as a brand-new Aveo, it just won't be a brand-new Lexus.

Same goes for printers. I'm too cheap to buy a brand-new mid-range laser printer, so I got one on Ebay for about $100. It's a HP LaserJet 2300; has a built-in duplexer, each cartridge prints 5000 pages, and I can get the carts on Ebay for $25. A 10/100 network card was another $12 or so on Ebay. This thing is designed for a monthly duty cycle of 50,000 pages (it's meant for workgroups and offices, not homes), so it's quite reliable.

When you're poor (or cheap), instead of consigning yourself to the cheapest brand-new item, you make do by getting stuff used, and sometimes fixing it up if you need to. At least, that's what smart poor people do. Stupid poor people just listen to what marketers tell them and buy all their stuff brand-new and suffer when it falls apart early.

A good way to tell smart and stupid poor people apart is to see what they do with their spare time, and what they spend their spare money on. The smart ones spend their time fixing up their stuff, learning to weld, etc., and their money on tools so they can be self-sufficient, and make up for their lack of income with the ability to do things for themselves and fix things up if they need to, and having the knowledge to do so. The stupid ones sit around and watch Jerry Springer and don't have a single tool in their home, and no idea how to accomplish the simplest thing.

Re:Razors?

[ChrisMaple]

reasons why the so-called "fair tax" is anything but

What part of "prebate" do you not understand?

Re:Razors?

[sco08y]

Ehh I've got karma to burn on OT. The problem with the idea of free market competition is today's market.

Fuck karma, fuck the mods. It's a hybrid economy. It hasn't been a free market since the New Deal.

The invisible hand doesn't work when you have huge corps that can use economics of scale and pure financial clout (I'll sell my shoes at a loss for years just to stop little guy X from getting a foothold (pun intended)) to kill competition.

Megacorps like Amazon? Got something to sell, they'll set you up with the same facilities that they have for virtually the entire process. Hell, you can rent a fucking supercomputer. Want to publish? Same deal, there are self publishing places galore, places that will help you sell your software, your music, other art, etc. And, yeah, if you're trying to set up a burger chain, you might be SOL, but damned near every immigrant starting a restaurant knows that Americans are sick of burgers and fries.

The job creators (small to medium sized business) are unable to compete with the big players and can *not* get started to a point where they could.

The job creators can't compete with the full faith and credit of the Federal Government. We have $14 trillion of public debt, and if you're trying to raise capital, your business has to compete with the 14 trillion pound gorilla that is the US government.

When they issue bonds, they will raise the rate until they get it. If you need a million dollars of capital, you have to prove that you can promise a better return, in spite of the 80% risk of you failing in the first year, than the guaranteed return of a Treasury bond.

If you're trying to hire employees, you have to provide a better wages and benefits package than the local, state and federal governments are offering.

And, of course, you have to comply with a raft of regulations, affecting everything from the building you're in, to your employees from the day you first meet them to the day they leave, any materials you handle, let alone the materials in your product, to arcane taxation and business filings.

And, unlike the government, you actually have to meet the bottom line while doing all this.

Re:Razors?

[roman_mir]

You got it backwards. The huge corporations do not appear out of thin air, they appear from the government halls, printing money, giving out favors, regulations that kill other competition, laws, that force those companies to be the only providers, regulations that favor large companies in the first place, because those monopolies are preferable to the gov't officials, who want money to go their way for reelections etc., and since competing companies do not have extra money to burn, they are not interesting to the politicians, but monopolies are.

Get the government out of business, that's the way to fix the problem. If there is no gov't in business, there is no reason for business to be in gov't, because even by buying some politician, if the politician has no teeth to change the business outcomes, then it's just a waste of money for that business, not a sound financial decision.

Re:Razors?

[Anonymous Coward]

That last paragraph just went on my refrigerator.... Thx.

Re:Razors?

[elrous0]

See also: payday loans, rent-a-center

Yeah, but you don't understand. I really *WANT* that new HDTV. And I want it NOW!

Re:Razors?

[elrous0]

The 19 century USA gained so much wealth because of high levels of innovation and production based on capitalism and mostly free market.

Yeah, the slaves and child laborers were very productive workers.

Re:Razors?

[roman_mir]

19 century USA didn't even have indentured servitude anymore, slavery wasn't the driving factor behind the factory innovation - Sir James Watt was.

As to children - children were put to good use at young age by their parents much before the factories even appeared on the horizon. The wealth created by the free market capitalism required a more educated work force and so the children lost their job opportunities over time to more automation and more educated work force. Sure, there was abuse, but you can't make an omelet without braking some eggs in the process. It's not like a society can go from very poor to very wealthy in just 100 years without certain amount of suffering, but when it does, it's not due to anything any government can do, it's due to individuals trying to profit from the market and introducing real wealth into it - products and services, which are the actual wealth, not money - production capacity.

Re:Razors?

[MrL0G1C]

2nd hand laser, over 5000 pages per cartridge, cartridge included - £28 (~â30 ~$45). Why bother with inkjects - 2nd hand lasers are very cheap and last forever (old HP LJs - built like tanks).

Re:Razors?

[bfields]

you'll get is less and less investment, because savings get wiped out

If there is deflation, then I can get a few percent a year just by stuffing my cash under a mattress. Why would that increase the incentive to invest my money?

Re:Razors?

[roman_mir]

It's all about relative terms, you want to invest into something that will make you MORE money, it's called cost of opportunity, because if you don't provide products in competing economy, somebody else will. Sure, you'll have a fixed amount of money that will appreciate in value over time, but that's all you'll have.

In 19 century USA the value of US dollar was appreciating, the prices were falling due to HEAVY competition though.

Re:Razors?

[Anonymous Coward]

These people aren't "stupid" they're ignorant. They've been disenfranchised by society and have been denied the opportunity to learn how to use tools and to make good decisions. You want to marginalize them and call them "stupid" and write them off as a loss to make yourself feel better. The fact that these people's misery exists in any modern western country means YOU, yes YOU are complicit in participating in a system that denies these people the opportunities they need to live a functional life.

You voted down provisions to fund their schools. You voted for leaders that abuse their constituents. You should feel guilty.

Re:Razors?

[Grishnakh]

You sound like a stupid liberal. "It's not their fault", blah blah blah. Give me a fucking break. The only reason they're "disenfranchised" by society is because they listen to their stupid peers and parents and refuse to avail themselves of the opportunities available, and just sit around and blame society and "rich people" (which really means everyone with a job) for all their problems, and complain that they aren't given enough free money by the government.

They have free public education, and all kinds of social services, and what do they do? They watch TV. Why should a poor person (who isn't satisfied with their financial situation) even have a TV? That's a luxury item. There's plenty of other poor people who work their way up to a much better lifestyle (a few becoming very rich, but lots achieving a very respectable middle-class status). Ever watch the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness"? That's a story of someone who went from having nothing to being quite rich. It's quite possible, but it requires a lot of hard work and something called "delayed gratification".

Our society has tons of opportunities for poor people to improve their lot in life. Public education is free, public libraries are free, there's need-based scholarships for poor kids, and if everything else fails, they can always enlist in the military where they'll receive free job training for something.

As for voting, the poor people can and do vote, so they're as much to blame for the political situation as anyone else.

Re:Razors?

[bfields]

Right, but the opportunity cost in this case is:

      (income from investing) - (income from stuffing cash under your mattress)

The second number is deflation.

And you're claiming that increasing deflation *increases* the opportunity cost.

At the very least, that's a claim that needs some convincing evidence!

Re:Razors?

[roman_mir]

The proof is right under your nose (if you live in USA).

19 century: The value of dollar rose by a factor of 2. The prices were falling, so for example bread cost less with every passing year, however at the same time USA became the manufacturing powerhouse, and all that manufacturing and production allowed it to pay back the debts to the European countries that US took on to build the production capacity, and US consumer became the wealthiest in the world relative to his earnings.

Re:Razors?

[bfields]

Well, that ignores the question.

Following some links. A fan of this Peter Schiff guy? You realize he a) appears to have a background in accounting, not economics, b) seems to have his own self interest (selling gold??), c) seems to cling to a lot of ideas that most economists consider long ago discredited. Anyone else you follow for analysis of the economy?

Some sources I'd recommend: The Economist, blogs by Krugman (or pick your favorite actual economist). Agree or disagree, some understanding of a wider variety of viewpoints is helpful.

Re:Razors?

[roman_mir]

it does not ignore the question, it answers the question simply by pointing out that in similar circumstances people increased production capacity and competition caused prices to fall.

Schiff is fine, he is understand economics through and through, unlike some people (Krugman), who said that any job gov't can provide is good, even if it's only digging and filling in trenches, and he has no clue about what inflation is. The Nobel Prize is dead to me until they take it back from at least Krugman and Obama.

Get to the important stuff

[hellkyng]

All I really want to know is if it can print Crysis 2?!?!

Re:Get to the important stuff

[Shadow of Eternity]

Yep but the framerate sucks.

Re:Get to the important stuff

[Opportunist]

But to be fair, it depends on the skill of your thumb when flicking the book.

What a coincidence!

[Anonymous Coward]

The recomended paper is from HP, and the most expensive on the "review". Must be to match their expensive and very small ink cartridges.

Get a shark

[blair1q]

Inkjets went out with the Turbo switch on the IBM PC-RT.

If you want clean results, get a shark with a fricken' laser-printer on its head.

Re:Get a shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Inkjets went out with the Turbo switch on the IBM PC-RT.

If you want clean results, get a shark with a fricken' laser-printer on its head.

Not true, for speed a laser is a lot better but for really high quality an inkjet is better because a toner grain is a lot larger than the smallest drop of ink that can be sprayed onto the paper. This size controls the quality of the print, but having said this if your paper is shit the print will be shit no matter what sort of printer you have.

Re:Get a shark

[blair1q]

"a toner grain is a lot larger than the smallest drop of ink that can be sprayed onto the paper"

Are you speaking from knowledge of the nozzle diameter of inkjet printers?

Toner powder is minuscule; tens of microns, maybe in diameter.

Pretty sure to keep from spending 100 years per page, inkjet nozzles are not that small.

Wikipedia says a 600 dpi printer should spec 8-10 micron toner powder. Various sources show inkjet nozzles down to 20 microns, but point out that they work by spitting out a bigger droplet than their nozzle, that then spreads before hitting the paper to make a flat disc of ink much wider than the droplet. Toner powder would spread, too, but the disc radius would be proportional to the 3/2 power of the radius of the droplet or toner grain, so that makes the droplet spread a lot more than the toner spread.

Laser resolution is limited more by the size of the laser (which draws the page in electric charge on the drum) than it is on the size of the grains. Which is one reason that laser print always looks sharper than inkjet print.

Re:Get a shark

[MartinSchou]

Which is one reason that laser print always looks sharper than inkjet print.

That certainly depends on the printers involved.

If you compare a 15 year old cheap-ass (at the time) laser printer to a cremé de la cremé inkjet printer of today, you'll find that the inkjet is sharper.

Re:Get a shark

[turtledawn]

Pft. A 20 um nozzle is ancient. More like 10um at this point for color, and the paper runs far closer to the head than used to be the case. Mono runs larger but that's because people want their docs to print quickly.

Re:Get a shark

[blair1q]

If you compare a 15 year old cheap-ass (at the time) laser printer to a cremé de la cremé inkjet printer of today

By "always" I meant "in all sane situations."

While you might accept a new, free inkjet in replacement for a low-end 1996 laser and consider it an upgrade, you would still take a 1996 HP LJ 4 over any modern inkjet, even if the inkjet was free. At least, I would.

Re:Get a shark

[marcosdumay]

Looks like the GP has the wrong complain. Most people that complain about the low quality of laser printers are in fact complaining that laser's ink doesn't splash on the paper, like inkjet's ink does, but stays in a much smaler space, lefting some small unprinted areas and giving the picture a granular aspect. Quite the oposite of what he states, but the simptoms match.

And, well, of course, with hight enough resolution that problem simply goes away.

Re:Be careful with laser printer's paper!

[h4rr4r]

Did not look at it, but rest assured it is GOATSE.
Same link.

Can you not afford normal entertainment?

I am offended!

[Lead Butthead]

Inkjets went out with the Turbo switch on the IBM PC-RT.

I am missing the joke here; IBM PC-RT never had a turbo button. But six quadzillion x86 PC clones (and their 286/386/486 children) all had it, and I loved it (if only for the silliness that it was.)

It's about the toner.

[Bing Tsher E]

But the cheapest and simplest aspect of printing can also have a big impact on the final quality: the paper

The biggest expense is the most avoidable. The ink. Don't buy an overpriced spray-and-pray blotter printer. Get a real laser printer. I bought mine at a University Surplus auction for $10. Toner for it was expensive, I paid $90 for a cartridge. But that's enough toner to print on several cases of paper.

The ink sellers will love it if you keep on using their expensive ink in your spray-printer, though.

Re:It's about the toner.

[rsborg]

But the cheapest and simplest aspect of printing can also have a big impact on the final quality: the paper

The biggest expense is the most avoidable. The ink. Don't buy an overpriced spray-and-pray blotter printer. Get a real laser printer. I bought mine at a University Surplus auction for $10. Toner for it was expensive, I paid $90 for a cartridge. But that's enough toner to print on several cases of paper.

The ink sellers will love it if you keep on using their expensive ink in your spray-printer, though.

Exactly. I bought my Mac-compatible laser printer new for $135 last year (newegg offer). There are some below the $100 mark. I have an old PC-only laser printer from years ago that still works and hasn't gone through the OEM toner package after 1000+ pages. Most toner packages are generic now, you can get a knockoff for $30 and the real thing for 2x.

You don't need to get lucky to get a cheap, decent, long-lasting printer... they just don't do color (unless you pay much more).

Re:It's about the toner.

[LordLucless]

It's not /really/ the ink vendors, either. When you buy official "ink", what you're really buying is a junk of hardware with a few mils of ink in it. If you want a cheap inkjet, get a continuous flow system. You can buy ink in volume, and you don't have to pay the extortionate amounts for the redundant hardware they sell you with each refill.

Re:It's about the toner.

[LordLucless]

"junk" should have been "chunk". Freudian slip there.

Re:It's about the toner.

[Trufagus]

Yes, the biggest expense is the ink, but getting a "real laser printer" is NOT the solution.

We've reached the point where the price you have to pay for re-fills, whether for laser printers or ink-jets, has nothing to do with the actual cost or with the efficiency of the print system. It is purely a question of what the seller can get away with.

Here is a review of a modern laser printer that is not recommended due to "horrendous running costs".
http://www.trustedreviews.com/HP-LaserJet-Pro-CP1025-Color_Printer_review

The solution is to select your printer based primarily on the running cost rather then the sticker price.

Re:It's about the toner.

[Gothmolly]

You sound hipster. 99.99% of the population buys their printers from Best Buy. Your smug superiority is irrelevant.

Re:It's about the toner.

[michaelmalak]

Don't buy an overpriced spray-and-pray blotter printer. Get a real laser printer.

It is indeed possible to buy a color laser for only $229.99 new (or $309.99 if you want reasonably priced consumables), but the colors are not as brilliant as an inkjet's. The brilliancy of color laser tonor works for almost all applications, but there are some applications where you want the extra oomph of brilliancy from an inkjet.

Dye sublimation is almost as brilliant as inkjet and of course much better resolution, but is expensive for full 8.5"x11" (although it's very cheap for photo size, evidently due to mass production; I still don't know why dye sub hasn't caught on enough for mass production after 20 years for 8.5"x11").

Re:It's about the toner.

[Anonymous Coward]

99.99% of the population that purchased printers also wants to print in color, which is why they buy crazy ink priced printers.

Re:It's about the toner.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great if you're doing B/W text printing 99% of the time. Still if you're doing something where you need to produce a greater color gamut, it's hard to beat the ink. Pricier, yes. But even color toner can't match the color gamut CMYK ink produces because it doesn't have the same translucent qualities. It lacks depth. Of course in order for the ink to come out ahead in this, you still need a decent quality paper.

Then again if you don't give a shit about photography or graphic design but still need color, then sure, color toner is great.

What I don't get is why they're wasting time benchmarking everyday paper. At those grades, most people don't care if there's some bleed-out or less than ideal reproduction. Average printing of stuff like map directions or a website coupon are what fast/draft/economy-mode printing is for. Ditto for any hard copies of text-only documents. I don't even bother printing high-quality unless doing photos on inkjet-photo-paper. What they should be benchmarking are the photo-grade papers where the quality of prints actually matters to people. (Of course if you really care you could take stuff to professional printers, but that kind of misses out on the convenience that an ink-jet printer provides. Perhaps paying extra to run some proofs to make sure its right, and driving somewhere and dealing with business hours.)

Re:It's about the toner.

[demonlapin]

That's a medical image reproduction device. I don't know if there are any cheap 8.5x11 ones out there, but anything certified for clinical use will be hideously expensive.

Re:It's about the toner.

[adolf]

That's great if you're doing B/W text printing 99% of the time. Still if you're doing something where you need to produce a greater color gamut, it's hard to beat the ink. Pricier, yes. But even color toner can't match the color gamut CMYK ink produces because it doesn't have the same translucent qualities. It lacks depth. Of course in order for the ink to come out ahead in this, you still need a decent quality paper.

Indeed. I use a cheap (free!) black-and-white Laserjet 5 for my printing needs. It's perfectly adequate for running off the occasional widget, or the occasional short hundred-or-so-page manual. I added an Ethernet card and some RAM, and the only thing it's missing is Postscript (and if anyone has a Postscript SIMM for it, let me know).

I've had it for about 7 years. It's been maintenance-free during that time, aside from one replacement toner cart (Ebay, sealed genuine HP, $20 shipped).

I've also got a respectably good inkjet, but it's been packed away in the closet for a few years and I haven't bothered with it. I used to use it a lot to print Google maps; but these days when I travel very far, I'm accompanied by both Droid (which can access the same Google maps wherever there is bandwidth) and Garmin (for when there is no bandwidth) and the old fashioned way (asking for directions/buying a map).

So, since I don't print maps much, I don't bother much with worrying about that inkjet. It'd revive easily enough with a new set of ink cartridges, but I find that I just don't care anymore.

If I want to print snapshots, I just send them over to Wal-Mart online and pick them up with my shopping. The results of their Fuji photographic/chemical printer are better than I can do myself, anyway, and the prices are awesome. Hell, they've even got a large-format HP inkjet there if I want to do an enlargement, which I've found is also rather economical to use.

If I want to print something more than a couple of hundred pages long, I send it over to a locally-owned print shop. They don't bat an eye at printing huge jobs, they're good people, they work fast, and it's both cheaper and better to just have them do it than mess with it myself.

Color laser printers have a place in the world with medium-volume business graphics and sales brochures, but for small volumes even this sort of work often looks better when printed on a good inkjet with high-quality paper.

There's at least one or two big, not-so-old, HP Color Laserjets at work which aren't being used, and which I could probably legitimately grab one of for myself. I just don't have a need for one, and don't want the pain of buying the initial set of toners for it, just to print color at home when I simply don't care anymore.

Re:It's about the toner.

[ChrisMaple]

If you're printing quality photos using the manufacturer's best paper, the cost of the paper can easily exceed the cost of the ink.

Re:It's about the toner.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if it falls in the "cheap" ballpark for you, but the Xerox ColorQube is a "solid ink" printer that you can get from NewEgg for ~$600. The ink is a bit expensive compared to some laser printers, at about 10-12 cents a page (estimated based on full CMYK), but that's probably in the same range if not cheaper than a dinky inkjet.

Re:It's about the toner.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the biggest expense is the ink, but getting a "real laser printer" is NOT the solution.

Yes, it is. You can easily buy a decent laser printer for the price of a few ink cartridges, and you'll print so many more times the pages that you would've with your inkjet that you end up saving a ton of money. It's really that simple.

Re:It's about the toner.

[demonlapin]

I don't actually need any of that stuff - with as little color as I print, the cheapest printer is Kinko's. Or Walmart/Walgreens for photos.

Re:It's about the toner.

[Anonymous Coward]

Smug superiority? Laser *is* superior in every quality benchmark. And cheaper. The only reason to not use it is ignorance.

Re:It's about the toner.

[tlhIngan]

Here is a review of a modern laser printer that is not recommended due to "horrendous running costs".
http://www.trustedreviews.com/HP-LaserJet-Pro-CP1025-Color_Printer_review

Yeah, it's a color. Most color lasers have horrible toner costs - replacing an entire set of 4 can often run easily $600+.

But a cheap laser printer that only does black and white can be had very cheaply, and for most of them, even the toner cartridges tend to last at least 1000 pages on the one packed in. 2500 seems to be around the standard for consumer lasers, and 5000+ for office lasers. And we're talking about cartridge prices of $100 or under normally (versus $100 for inkjets that barely do 500).

We've moved from an inkjet to a laser, and I don't think I've ever run into a situation where I've missed the ability to print in color.

Photos are best done with a real printer using real photo paper - they'll last longer and look better than those inkjet based photo printers at the store. Costco digital prints can be had very cheaply.

Re:It's about the toner.

[AmiMoJo]

My friends keep buying inkjets because they want to print photos, and I keep telling them that it is cheaper and easier to just order the prints online or at the local print shop. You can get most of your prints for free by using all the introductory offers (hint: you can even re-use them by having someone else sign up with a new account).

I picked up a brand new colour Ricoh laser for £50 (with £20 email-in rebate) from Oyyy. New toners are more than the printer but the ones it comes with are rated for 1000 pages (at the standard 5% coverage mind you, not photos).

Re:It's about the toner.

[Anonymous Coward]

Find a photographer, or serious graphic artist who uses a laser printer (and no the 1/4 million Dollar Fuji Frontier type printers don't count as laser printers, even though they use lasers to print). The colour gamut of laser just is not there. Even a cheap inkjet will give more colour than any consumer colour laser. And lets not even talk about archival permanence.

Re:It's about the toner.

[r_jensen11]

I still don't know why dye sub hasn't caught on enough for mass production after 20 years for 8.5"x11"

Because it's cheaper to have photos printed out at a store (e.g. CVS, Walgreens, etc) than buy the dye sub printer and the paper that goes with it.

Re:It's about the toner.

[Patch86]

My Kodak inkjet MFU (with Wifi) was about £75. Equivalent colour laser MFU- about £300. Cartridge for my inkjet- £10 (last about 3 months each, separate carts for colour and B&W). Cost of colour toner- about £110. Lets pretend the toner cartridge will last 2 years (just a guess- I don't own one for comparative purposes, so it's tough to know how quickly my current use would burn through it).

That means the laser printer is only £25 cheaper in ink/toner every year, which means I'd have to own it for 9 years to break even. Even assuming the toner cartridges last longer than I guessed, that's still not exactly a stellar saving.

Obviously YMMV (I've never seen colour toner for UK equivalent of $90, so maybe it's just another one of those things where we're shafted compared to our amigos across the Atlantic).

Re:It's about the toner.

[LordVader717]

My frustration with inkjet printers was that the ink would dry out, effectively increasing the running cost far beyond the best-case scenario that reviewers analyze. They also fail much more often, generally after a period of non-use. Laser printers on the other hand are much more reliable will function flawlessly after extended dormant periods.
For the small fortune of money I must have invested in ink cartridges and refills, I can say that I have very few color print-outs to show for it.

If you print large volumes then it will obviously make sense to go for the solution with the cheapest ink. I suspect the best solution would be a continuous-ink inkjet system.
For most home users however, who use their printer mostly for printing letters and text documents, and might occasionally want a color print-out of something pretty, I would tend to recommend something that won't require an awful lot of maintenance.

Re:It's about the toner.

[Bing Tsher E]

I used to work at LaserMaster, where they pioneered continuous flow ink. In fact, they got into a big stinky pissing match with Hewlett-Packard because they started buying DeskJet cartridges in bulk, dumping the ink out of them and reselling them with their big bag of ink attached. They designed these into their large format printers and had a good thing going.

Re:It's about the toner.

[Rich0]

Yup. And for me the biggest benefit of switching to laser was that I NEVER get support calls from home when I'm at work now. It used to be that it seemed like every three days somebody was asking me for help cleaning the nozzles or whatever - you'd just never get really good clean printouts. Maybe we have a lot of dust in our house or something, but inkjets have always been a pain to maintain. And every time you clean those nozzles you're wasting liquid gold.

The laser just sits there until you hit print, then it prints, and the page just comes out looking exactly like it should every time. Once every 6-12 months it asks for more toner (color model), and I feed it a little. The toner isn't even that expensive - probably costs me $35 to fill one cartridge, and I'm still on the original drum kit.

There is a reason every big office in America uses laser printers - they're a LOT less fuss to maintain, so your employees are printing documents and not waiting for the help desk or pretending to be printer repair technicians.

Benchmark The Printer Dots Instead!

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/
https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots

Re:Benchmark The Printer Dots Instead!

[greg1104]

You can buy a $5 Mini LED flashlight from the EFF that makes the yellow dots much more visible. I like to keep it around for when people accuse me of being too paranoid when I'm ranting about privacy and such. Grab the nearest color printout, shine the blue light on it, and show there are hidden yellow dots that can be used to track you; that's a good way to make people really nervous as they consider what else I'm saying is true. More fashionable than tin foil, too.

Re:Be careful with laser printer's paper!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder sometimes what the point of posting goatse links is, the world has moved on and it's not even that shocking anymore.

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Is paper software or hardware?

Interesting, but I really don't get it

[nomel]

Sure, I care about contrast and such when printing on regular paper so that I can see the lines and words and simple pictures or diagrams that I'm printing. But I don't and never will care about anything beyond mediocre color accuracy if I'm printing on plain paper. Even if the color is 100% accurate, anything beyond text and line art, it will still look like complete crap...it's regular paper!

If I want a pretty prints that I give even the slightest care about, I'll use photo paper (matte or gloss).

Re:Interesting, but I really don't get it

[hjf]

"Regular" coated paper, which is usually 108gr (vs 75-90gr), for inkjet it's much, much better than regular paper. It's whiter, feels softer, and doesn't suck ink like regular paper. You can print photos on it and they will look pretty good (not just a brown smudge). Ink will not go through so you can print both sides (but it usually is coated in only one side).

A pack of 100 sheets costs like $5. It's expensive, but if you need to print a nice report and don't have a color laser, it will give great results. The colors, especially the reds, will appear much brighter in that paper.

Re:Interesting, but I really don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Regular" coated paper

You keep using that word...

Bran flakes keep a man regular.

A weekly meeting is a regular event.

A commonly-available type of paper is not regular.

Re:Interesting, but I really don't get it

[hjf]

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/regular

(...)
1. With constant frequency or pattern.
2. (mostly US) Normal; ordinary
(...)

why do I, a native Spanish speaker, have to teach an english speaker, his own language?

Re:Why wouldn't someone find a way to benchmarkpap

[Nimey]

It's time to upgrade from your ASR-33, grandpa.

I've printed Cysis

[Anonymous Coward]

The frame rates are much better on a laser. I can't quite figure it. Maybe its the 3d graphics card.

h4rr4r is karma whore!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think h4rr4r posts them, probably to improve his karma.
h4rr4r, please stop whoring!

Re:h4rr4r is karma whore!

[h4rr4r]

I have never posted a link to that image. unlike you Anonymous Coward. Mod me funny to avoid karma boost.

Dah rules

[RobertLTux]

If you can hit it its hardware
if you can't its software
if its software going to a device then its firmware

so the manual for your new program is hardware
the DVD/CD/FD your program is on is hardware

your download folder is full of software

Re:Why wouldn't someone find a way to benchmarkpap

[Paradise Pete]

I've been getting terrible frame rates from my usual printer paper.

You may be positioning it across the grain rather than with it. Holding it up against a bright light should show that. Also, try using a green marker to trace a rectangle around the edges.

I am Impressed!

[blair1q]

Searches for "IBM PC-RT turbo button" on Google are already turning up this thread.

Answer: Google is lurking on /.

Also, if the RT has no turbo button, what's it doing with a speed indicator?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31231773@N02/4468867321/in/set-72157623718669848

Toms

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom's
<page break>
Hardware
<page break>
reviews
<page break>

.

.

Ah fsck it, can't be bothered...

Re:Be careful with laser printer's paper!

[Hatta]

Maybe he's a hipster and is posting goatse ironically.

Whats an ink jet printer ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats an ink jet printer ?

Re:Why wouldn't someone find a way to benchmarkpap

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I would laugh but I still remember receiving telexes on the ASR-33.

May Fools?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even when reading the headline I thought this might be a joke.

Wilhelm Imaging Research

[lemur3]

of course, i didnt rtfa.

but.. i think this "Tom" was beaten out by Wilhelm long ago!

http://www.wilhelm-research.com/

Wilhelm Imaging Research, Inc. conducts research on the stability and preservation of traditional and digital color photographs and motion pictures.

Wilhelm was a founding member of the Photographic Materials Group of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, is a member of the Electronic Materials Group of AIC, and was a founding member of American National Standards Institute/ISO subcommittee IT9-3 (now called ISO WG-5 Task Group 3), which is responsible for developing standardized accelerated test methods for the stability of color photographs and digital print materials

yeah!!! but uhh, maybe this geek website is doing better?

Re:Wilhelm Imaging Research

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly I wouldn't trust Tom's hardware less. If you haven't heard of Tom's hardware before this then maybe Slashdot isn't the place for you.

Biased Article?

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading TFA twice now (seriously!), I really can't shake the feeling that this article isn't on the level. Their winner was the HP Multipurpose paper, but actually going back over their results, the HP Multipurpose is near the bottom of all of their quantitative tests. Meanwhile their subjective tests are subjective - I wouldn't say any of the multipurpose papers are all that different.

Meanwhile the conclusion reads as if it was written by a PR firm:

The difference between these six reams is not significant enough to cause a printed bar code to be unreadable, but paper is still an integral part of our lives. We print family photos, legal documents, bills, rebates, and school papers. Why not buy the best value that also yields optimal results?

Basically their data supports the Dynex paper as the best multipurpose paper, and given their focus on "value" in conclusion it's also the cheapest.

I don't like accusing sites of being underhanded because I don't believe in unnecessary cynicism, but given the content of the article and the outright odd nature of suddenly reviewing printer paper, this thing reeks of payola from HP.

Re:Biased Article?

[sco08y]

Basically their data supports the Dynex paper as the best multipurpose paper, and given their focus on "value" in conclusion it's also the cheapest.

It was best in color gamut, but not text reproduction or bleed through.

I don't like accusing sites of being underhanded because I don't believe in unnecessary cynicism, but given the content of the article and the outright odd nature of suddenly reviewing printer paper, this thing reeks of payola from HP.

Toms is going to decide on someone, since these are all relatively good brands of paper. That someone will probably will be more likely to quote their review if it sounds spammy, and that will send more people back to their site.

I'm fine with my inkjet

[PCM2]

I have a Brother MFC-6490CW inkjet printer. At the time I bought it, it was on sale and Amazon.com shipped it to my front door for $190, total.

I chose this particular printer largely because of a novelty: It is a multi-function machine that can both scan and print at sizes up to 11x17" (aka Tabloid or Ledger, the ISO equivalent being A3). You won't find any laser printers that can do that for less than a couple thousand dollars.

My printing needs are best described as "light." I realized that 90 percent of what I print out I print for my own use. I carry it around for however long I need it, probably a few days, and then it ends up in the recycle bin. I never print photos on photo paper, because as many people have pointed out, that's a waste of ink (and hence money). I do often print things with photographs in them, though (Web pages, etc.) so I like those printouts to be in color. I also like my text to be in color -- it makes it easier to see things like hyperlinks, highlights, annotations, etc. But I really don't care if any of it is "presentation quality," because I'm likely to be the only one who sees it.

The printer came with a set of high-capacity ink cartridges. That set lasted me, I would guess, about a year and a half. Since then I've bought off-brand, generic cartridges, and I've been mostly happy with them. The genuine Brother black ink is more water-resistant than the generic ink, but for my purposes, it mostly serves.

I don't remember what I paid for them, but checking Amazon right now, I can order a set of four high-capacity black cartridges, plus two sets of all three colors, for $10.48. They get cheaper if you buy them in bulk.

So all in all, I'd say I don't feel ripped off. I get to scan big things from time to time and print them out on big paper in color from time to time, and the rest of the time I have an adequate ink jet office machine that costs me less per year than I'd usually spend on lunch.

Re:I'm fine with my inkjet

[jrumney]

Are the cartridges region coded? After moving from Europe to Asia, I've discovered I can no longer buy cartridges for my printer, and the ones that are locally available, which differ in model number by one digit but are physically identical refuse to work unless I swap the chips from my old cartridges (which also require resetting due to the counter in them, supposedly to protect the printer from damage caused by running the cartridge completely dry, but we all know the real reason is to prevent them from being easily refilled). I want to dump my printer on the manufacturer's doorstep with a note about what I think of their environmental responsibility in making their products so unreusable, but first I need to find a replacement that doesn't come with such idiotic profit-protection measures.

Re:I'm fine with my inkjet

[Confusador]

I have to agree. It only works for me because I print at home no more than couple times a year, so an ink cartridge set lasts for about 2 years before they dry up, and then it's only $10 to replace them.

Re:I'm fine with my inkjet

[dkf]

Are the cartridges region coded?

It massively varies by manufacturer and maybe also by printer model. I've got a Canon inkjet, and its ink cartridges just contain ink; each cartridge is also monochromatic, so they can be replaced on their own schedule. It cost a bit more than the equivalent HP at the time (quite a few years ago, to be fair) but it has worked out much cheaper overall since we can easily use cheap third-party replacement inks. Theoretically the expensive inks are better, but not enough to justify the extra cost. (Using better paper makes more difference; a so-so print on cheap 80gsm paper looks hugely better on 120gsm glossy photo-quality paper/card.)

The detection of the ink levels is purely optical, in case you're wondering, depending on the difference in refractive index between ink and air (there's a tiny prism built into the base of the cartridge body). It's an elegant technical solution that's really cheap to manufacture.

Re:I'm fine with my inkjet

[Anonymous Coward]

Brother are pretty good about that; they don't chip their cartridges, so you can refill the cartridges yourself if you're so inclined. Most of the models house the cartridges in a static chamber as well, so constant flow systems clean and easy to hook up to them.

Basically, they're the Nintendo of the printer world; they make their money up front on the printer itself (thanks to heavily re-use of components, including the chassis, across the entire lineup) and as a result the consumables are cheaper, even buying direct from brother themselves. Good manufacturer, but their inattention to form meant that most people overlooked their machines. About three years ago they revamped the model lineup, and they do look a lot better for it; here's hoping they can make inroads without becoming another HP.

Re:I'm fine with my inkjet

[Anonymous Coward]

Brother don't chip their cartridges at all, last I checked. They're in a static chamber at the front of the machine, so you can even hook up a constant flow system without having to tamper with the machines safety features or leaving parts of it open.

Re:I'm fine with my inkjet

[PCM2]

Are the cartridges region coded?

Not as far as I know. Brother might use different part numbers for different regions, but if the cartridge is labeled for your particular printer, it should work.

Brother was also shipping printers with full, high-capacity cartridges while HP was still shipping half-full cartridges.

Re:I'm fine with my inkjet

[evilviper]

Amazon.com shipped it to my front door for
$190, total.

You can get a color laser printer for $130... They don't clot, ink won't ever dry up, don't need head cleaning, print better looking text than any inkjet could hope for, consumables are dirt cheap, and toner is vastly more durable than any ink.

I got a samsung clp-300 for $150 about 4 years ago now, and it's doing just fine. But look up the price of generic consumables and be amazed... A fraction of a cent per page.

11x17" (aka Tabloid or Ledger, the ISO
equivalent being A3). You won't find any laser
printers that can do that for less than a couple
thousand dollars.

That's true. However, when facing that dilemma for my employer, I figured out that practically any laser printer can handle US Legal, at 8.5x14, which means simply scaling printouts down by a few percent allow us to use any $50 laser printer while still being perfectly readable, instead of requiring a $3,000 large format laser. The rest should be obvious...

You got it all wrong...

[Lead Butthead]

That's no speed indicator. That's a POST code display, so if power up self test chokes somewhere, you can tell which test choked.

Thermite.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Banging them against a wall is just not sufficient.

Re:Thermite.

[Opportunist]

Depends on the explosive your walls are made of.

color is a perception

[p51d007]

I've worked on photocopiers, printers & wide format units for over 30 years. I carry a paper sample card with me that shows the color red, in different shades. Some glossy, some matte finish, some bright, some dark. When I get an end user that says "the colors don't look right", after I determine there isn't anything wrong with the machine, the driver, or how it is set up, I check their paper. Usually they will "cheap out" on inexpensive big box paper, and less than 92 bright. I whip out my sample card that shows all the colors through the front and ask them which one is red. They most likely pick one of the middle red colors, which is a bright glossy red. I then open it up, and show them that the red color they see in different brightness levels or hues, is the EXACT SAME SHADE of red, but printed on different paper stocks. Most of the time they get it, and once I show them how to set different driver profiles for each type of paper, I never hear about it again.

Re:Why wouldn't someone find a way to benchmarkpap

[Cylix]

Who cares how they found a way!

I've already cracked my printer open and began rewinding the motors with more copper.

When I'm done it's going to have exhaust valves that release pressure like a turbo charged car.

Sure it might spray a fine cloud of ink each type I print, but at least it will be faster.

Can't print it?!? WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

So an article about printer paper... that you can't print unless you have some sort of account. Ironic.

did this over 20 years ago

[frovingslosh]

I did this long ago, shortly after the HP500 came out and noticed that results were pretty varied in my office. We went to a large office supply store and bought a ream of every type of paper they had. Went back to the office and ran some comparison tests. We found that the difference in paper was significant and the most expensive paper was not the best. And the recycled paper was worse than the cheaper non-recycled paper. We also found that the side that we printed on made a big difference, one side was definitely producing better results than the other. We ended up picking the best paper and telling the office manager to only buy that type for the inkjets. Put up signs to show which side of the paper to load pointing down in the tray. And used all of the reject reams in the copier and the laser jets.

Re:did this over 20 years ago

[SocPres]

The two sides for cut-sheet communication paper you describe are known as the "felt" side and the "wire" side. The felt side is the "top" of the paper and should usually be printed on first. Some paper manufacturers will specify this on a ream of paper with an arrow. The difference is in the way the paper fibers are oriented as they pass across the felt/wire in the paper machine, which translates to "better" printing on one side vs the other.

Try this: take a ream of new paper and hold it in the middle of the long axis between your thumbs and forefingers. Notice the amount of droop on the edges. Now flip the ream over -- you should see that the amount of droop is different.

Google can help with all the specifics. Enjoy!

Re:Why wouldn't someone find a way to benchmarkpap

[greg1104]

Also, your printer may work better if you plug the right kind of clock into the outlet next to it. Between that and the green rectangle trick, my printouts are so realistic they give me a giant Mpingo woodie every time I look at them.

Photoquality colour laser?

[LongearedBat]

I don't think you can buy a laser printer that's as good as inkjet printers at printing colour photos... and is cheap enough to buy for sporadic home use.

I'd be happy if you tell me I'm wrong. Have I've just been sucked in by marketing?

Good to see that someone has made a benchmark test like this. It'd be interesting to see the results of testing the differences between printers too.

toilet paper

[Anonymous Coward]

they forgot to benchmark printing on toilet paper

The principle of ink-jet printer

[happinessme]

Impact Printers Inkjet printers are developed after, the use of non-combat work. The advantages of the more prominent small size, simple operation, printing, low noise, can be played using special paper and photo pictures and more comparable. After several years of tempering, the ink-jet printer technology has made great development.

Benchmark ? No: calibrate

[dargaud]

This problem has been solved long ago: get a color calibrator and generate profiles for each of you printer + ink set + paper combination. Then you'll get reliable prints. Now let's get onto the real problem: why did my printer stop working with Ubuntu 11.04 ?

Horses for courses

[HarryatRock]

If you only print a few pages a month use a print shop (but you might want a cheap inkjet on hand for emergency use, proofs, and the note for the delivery van).
If you only print BW letter or A4 get a good second hand office laser.
If you print a lot of small colour items, get a decent A4 inkjet that you can fit with a CIS system. Brother DCP195c with refillable tanks is worth looking at.
If like me you print a lot of A3 colour on heavy ( > 200 gsm) card for framing or to make greeting cards, tourist items, menus etc. then invest in a good solid A3+ printer with CIS. I use a Brother 6690 printer on a wireless LAN,. Tanks hold about 150 ml and can be topped up while printing. Ink costs about £2 per 100ml bottle for good quality ink, I use about £20 ink for about 6000 prints. I prefer a mat finish so I don't use photo paper, but I buy good coated paper and willingly pay for it. The fact that this printer includes an A3 scanner with auto feeder, and USB stick - SD card reader all available on the LAN, and that it works from windoze and linux hosts, played a part in my selection of this printer, but my primary reason was that a good simple CIS system was available and it has two supply trays, both capable of A3.

This isn't new, but nice

[Kamiza Ikioi]

This isn't new, but I'm glad they've done this. People do this all day long where I work. They "benchmarked" all of our paper, inks, etc. to industry standards. After all, we run a professional high volume printing shop as part of what we do. This just brought some of the tools we use down to the consumer level and wrote it up for the casual user to understand and limited the paper significantly. The actual range of paper is nearly as great as the range of colors available, not to mention other printable surfaces.

I think this article is a great read. Most home users have no idea how much paper matters. There is a reason why prices vary so much at your local store. Good paper costs good money. Forget pictures, think of your resume. If you want to make an impression, don't go with cheap copier paper unless you also show up to your interview wearing a wrinkled tshirt and sweatpants. AFAIK, the greatest artists didn't paint on toilet paper either.

Other sources for good paper data

[neile]

If you're doing fine art inkjet prints on the higher end printers, you likely aren't using the papers referenced in the article :) There are, however, several good sites that collect hard data on the various paper options out there:

• Dane Creek Folios Inkjet Paper List: A good way to filter on the various inkjet papers by tone, texture, weight, OBA presence, etc. Helps to narrow choices down to a select few for testing. Full disclosure: I maintain this list.
• Aardenburg Imaging and Archives: Longevity test results for various printer/inkset/paper combinations. Very useful if you care about knowing how long your print will last under assorted lighting conditions or the OBA content of your print media.
• Spectrum Viz: Spectral plots for inkjet papers to help determine reflectance levels of the various options on the market.

Neil
Owner, Dane Creek Printing

We used to benchmark printer paper at Adobe ;)

[Skuld-Chan]

I had a chance for a week to work with a color scientist there. We used to create an ICC profiles for the printer by printing out a color pattern without using any color profiles or modifications to the output, then capture that color information using a spectrometer.

I found that I could create some pretty amazing prints when the printer was properly calibrated to the paper (even really cheap printers - sub $100 models) you were using, but that it took a $12,000 piece of hardware to do it (I which I could remember the name/brand of the machine that did this - something German as I recall, but it basically had a robot arm that would analyze each swatch of the test pattern we printed earlier).

I'm fine with my size.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the mention. I'm in the market for a printer all-in-one and that just may fit the bill.

Other Uses

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, but I find this benchmarking to be sorely lacking. I buy and shred printer paper for my bunny to pee on in his cage. Where's the benchmark for that?

makes sence

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom's Hardware has been at the forefront of news and reviews of PC components for elite entusiasts for over a decade The problem is that nobody wants PC desktop shit anymore. Sales in desktops and components have dived bombed over the last few years and I am sure the community of people interested in how many flips or flops their whatever does is shrinking too (I lost interest years ago ). So what else is there to do but count how many pages fly out of a printer and try to attach some bullshit numbers to things the average Luddite holding an iPad might be interested in. The era of the elite computer consumer is officially dead, the Luddites have won. Let the era of printer paper fanboys begin.