Printer Advice?

Hi people! I'm looking at getting a good, solid, all-round printer for family use. You know, Ok at text, Ok at pictures e.t.c I have had a Hp 693C for years and liked it, and so I am looking at the Hp DJ6122 as a replacement.
If you have one, could you tell me if it is worth it?


Thanks for any help!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

EDIT: I tried to do a poll but it didnt work..have they been turned off in this forum?

I like Epson printers a lot. They are a little more expensive at first but you get more bang for your buck IIHO both from the printer and ink. We've tried generic Inks with our Epson printers but in the end always go back to genuine Epson.

Right now we have a SOHO model, an Epson 980. It prints faster than low end Ink Jets with comprable quality. A $32 Black Ink Cart seems to last forever (My dad works from home about half the time so we do *lots* of printing).

When we need a nice photo you just load in the Photo Paper (It prints ok photos on plain paper) and turn the resolution up to 2880x1440. Jaw dropping results are inevitable.

We didn't go with a 5 color printer because we do mostly black with some graphics thrown in and didn't feel like paying for 2 extra colors we didn't use much. You may read about printers where you can replace colors separatly but after doing lots of research I have come to the conclusion that most home color printing is well balanced and you probably artn't throwing away that much ink.

My brother, a graphic designer, told me that (In his experience) none of the pros use HP, they all use Epson.


What ever you do stay away from Lexmark. This is where Ink costs really come into play. Like I said the carts for our Epson seems expensive (I think it's about $32 for a black and $30 for a color) but they last forever. Lexmark printers are cheap but you pay like $40 for a tiny cart!

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Plus Lexmark is the company that has pioneered putting a completely unnecessary chip into their laser printer carts so that 3rd party companies can't make replacements for them. They are suing the 3rd parties that reverse engineered their chips under the DMCA to get them to stop. Talk about unintended use. That in and of itself is enough to make me avoid them. And that I've used their gear at various jobs and there isn't anything special about it.

I have also had great experience with Epson printers. Good drivers for all platforms and decent performance.

I would go for the HP. I have had several (and still have them) without a problem. It seems like every time I get a new desktop I get a new HP DeskJet and still love them. I would never consider getting any other brand of printer. Hope this helps.

-Mike

I use a Brother all-in-one and it is great! Cartridges are cheap and there are separate ink tanks.

To each their own, but right now I have three Epson Stylus Color printers, and have always used the Seiko-Epson line for quality output.

I do not use the OEM cartridges, but get mine exclusively from Carrot's Ink Cartridges both for their quality and their price. I've been using Carrot's since late '98.

Bottom line, though, is everyone has their favorites and a whole bunch of reasons why their's is the ONLY choice. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I agree with Ryan on staying away from Lexmark and I'd also try to stay away from printers that have a "chip" in the ink cartridge because of price concerns, and because of a recent court case Lexmark won that may block other manufacturers from making replacement cartridges if they don't own the "rights" to the chip. Long story.



-= MICROSOFT FREE ZONE =-

Tomas--we got a cart off eBay cheap and it was a generic. Have purchased a few since then and it's never been a plesant expeience--for example the last black generic I put in clogged the head (Printing head test patern left gaps in lines) after 8 or so cleaning cycles there were STILL gaps in the lines.

Carrot is good? Maybe we'll try them.

I've had a HP Deskjet 722c ($299) for around six years and just this week had my first trouble with it. I loved that printer.
Replaced it today with a Deskjet 5550 ($109 after $20 gift card at Staples).

Too early to say if it prints any better. Sure looks better on the outside!
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

I haven't thought about Epson for many years. Maybe time to look again. I need a new fax and figured I would get an HP 135D. I need it for lots of copies and faxing. I have a scanner I would toss if I get it but I rarely scan. I would use it for my occasional color printing but primarily it's for faxes and copying. Any other suggestions, maybe an Epson all-in-one? I might as well hijack the thread for my own evil designs. I use an old large IBM 3112 laser printer and will continue to use it even after I get the new all-in-one. It has gone through 6-8 thousand sheets of paper on the same toner cartridge. It's only black and white but it's fast. I have another cartridge standing by if I am ever able to kill this one. Bought it used, came out of a bank.

I would almost rather write by hand than use a Lexmark. I have a small Lexmark laser in my office at work and it is weak. My buddy next to me just tossed his Lexmark because ink cost was killing him.

I would have said HP is a good reliable choice but Epson seems to be getting some nods.

My printer of choice is the HP 6L. I like the speed of laser printing and I do not print color unless I plan to print pictures from my digital cam. Those I take to the guy upstairs who has a high end color laser printer for his photography business. You spend a few extra $$ getting laser but with 5,000 to 6,000 pages per $65 toner cartridge you can't beat the cost per page.

Hi Kev,

Got a HP photosmart p1100. Really good printer. It also prints on both sides of the paper and does excellent with photos. If I had to get another printer I would probably get an Epson, however. I think they do a better job on photos and never seem to show any banding.

Went back to OEM cartridges after many problems with refills. They just don't seem to work well.

Cheers,
Kev

Most "home" printers these days are incredibly inexpensive to purchase initially, but most of them can get VERY expensive to feed.

One of my printers, for example, cost me $49 new when bought with a 'puter.

The first set of replacement color and black cartridges cost about $65.

Don't just look at first cost, but also pay a LOT of attention to the cost of cartridges and any special papers required. I can make commercial quality 8x10 color prints for about $.41 each. Some printers cost closer to $2-3 each ... (Paper recommendation: Office Depot Premium Photo Paper for quality color prints, Presentation Paper for brochures, etcetera - will do good color photo's both sides.)

I'd also like to mention that the provider of ink cartridges I mentioned earlier has most of their cartridges manufactured fresh, not refilled or refurbished. The only time they refurbish / refill is when the printer manufacturer has specificly tied up either the patents or copyrights so that there will be no competition for their overpriced cartridges.

So far, with 5 different Seiko-Epson cartridge series (10 different cartridges), I have not had any problems with the cartridges or ink, nor have any of them been anything other than freshly manufactured.

Much of my printing in the past has been extreme short lead time commercial jobs for clients, and there have been no problems with quality or color balance.

(I suspect this sort of quality is why they have gone from a mom-and-pop-in-the-garage operation in '98 to what is currently the largest internet provider of ink cartridges.)

As to most "refills" and "refill kits" available, I'm dubious of their quality and reliability. Since the survival of my business was at least in part based on print quality and repeatability, there is no way I would have trusted it to low quality supplies.

There is a big difference between 'refilled used cartridges' and 'newly manufactured cartridges.' Just because the cartridges are not manufactured by the printer manufacturer does NOT make them of less quality. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Again, though, everyone has their own opinion(s), and this is just mine. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif



-= MICROSOFT FREE ZONE =-

I must also say stay away from lexmark ink jet printers(dot matrix for forms is ok).

And I like my epson 440.

As far as ink goes, look for one that has waterproof black ink.
That was the ONLY thing I liked about my lexmark.

I got a cart. refill kit that has waterproof black ink that I use to refil the epson cart. to get the benifits of waterproof ink.

I haven't fussed with printers since I used a Commodore 64 computer in the early to mid 1980s! I think I used an Okimate-10 for color printing jobs, and a Commodore MPS-802 for regular (dot matrix) black & white jobs. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Somewhere around here I have a Lexmark and a Rainbow for color, an Epson 24-pin dot matrix for black & white jobs (all for the PC), and at least half a ream of cheap tractor-feed paper. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

I guess I'm not one to ask for printer questions, since I use them so rarely. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif

Thanks alot every one for taking the time to reply! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I am an HP fan for their printers. My current printer is the Deskjet 3820. Its little brother has very small ink cartidges, at about the same price as this one's. This is not a photo quality printer. It has both parallel and USB interfaces, and is compatible with Mandrake Linux 9.0. I just got this one recently, as my Deskjet 670C finally died by a plastic part shattering on its own, after alot of usage, since I bought it new in 1998. Before the 670C, I had a 500C and learned then, that I hate swapping black and color cartridges. I like black and color, not grungy green (what they call composite black) and color.

Like a friend of mine, we both say to stay with the company you have the best experience with. He uses Canon printers.

My only experience with an Epson printer, was with their laser printer, back around 1990. I hated that printer, as I would get a max of 4 clean pages, then dual toner streaks down the center of each page after. I was constantly tearing it apart to clean it and never got through the toner cartridge it came with. I got rid of it before then. Got the 500C and have been happy ever since with HP.

My printer budget is a max of $150 + tax for the printer, plus it needs to be compatible with Mandrake Linux. When I went searching on the internet for a new printer, I went to Mandrake's hardware database for reference on makes and models. It was Serendipity that I got an envelope from Office Max with discount coupons exactly 30 minutes after my 670C broke for good (while I was installing Mandrake no less). So I checked their website to see what they had that met my requirements, wrote down the makes and models, then my friend arrived to take me to Office Max to get a new printer.

I have been happy with it ever since.

Many people are loyal to the brand (make) that they have the best experience with, and trash the one they have had the worst experience with. Pay no heed to this sort of praising and trashing, since it only reflects their own experiences, and is not a general reflection of quality. They just got unlucky with a particular brand, repeatedly. Some people have this 'sort' of luck.

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Charles Bradshaw said:
Many people are loyal to the brand (make) that they have the best experience with, and trash the one they have had the worst experience with. Pay no heed to this sort of praising and trashing, since it only reflects their own experiences, and is not a general reflection of quality. They just got unlucky with a particular brand, repeatedly. Some people have this 'sort' of luck.

[/ QUOTE ]

I decited about a year ago to quit trashing. I've not perfected it yet, I'll still trash Maglights and it's hard not to trash a feeble little Palm (Vs. PocketPC) but I don't trash Macs OR Pcs anymore...in fact I want a 12" Powerbook to replace my laptop. This is true with printers. I've had nothing but bliss from my Epsons. Part of this had to do with the fact that our first Epson had about a gazillion LEDs so that when something was wrong with it, you could look at the printer and see exactly what was wrong with it. All the HPs at the time just had like 1 light that made you wonder if it was a paper jam, ink out, fatal error...

I still prefer the Epson Ink Jets but we use HP Laserjets at school (Heck, who doesn't use Laserjets?) and I think they're supurb printers. The 4000 is quick and will take a whole ream of paper and, much like that good ole Epson Stylus Color II it's got an LCD that tells you just what's wrong. On my side of the lab is an old HP Laserjet III...it's a slow bugger, my Epson 980 runs circles aroudn it, but it has the crap beat out of it by a lab full of High School students every day and refuses to quit.

Like others here, I strongly advise people to watch their ongoing operating costs.

I use a Canon S800 6-color photo printer (it's been superseded by the S820 and S900, or an S9000 if wide-format is what you need).

It has separate ink tanks for each color (NO wasted ink in any color), and the ink tanks are just that: tanks. No chips or other gimmicks. They use an elegantly simple prism at the bottom of the tank to read when you're getting low.

Honestly, the downside to Canons is that their supplies are harder to find in stores. I buy refill kits from MIS Associates (www.inksupply.com), and I have been happy with the results. The simple design of the ink tanks means that after you refill once, they're almost ridiculously simple to refill a second time.

I also use third party paper. Kodak premium photo papers work quite well in this printer, and Kodak provides printer setting for most popular printers. The Kodak paper is pretty cost effective, too. In my opinion, my inkjet prints look as good as a traditional photo print, and they're less expensive, too.

My Canon feeds paper very reliably, and almost never needs an ink-wasting head cleaning. It just *works*... I don't have to prepare for a print job by checking to see how many nozzles are clogged.

Finally, I did my homework at www.dpreview.com, in their printers and printing forum. Most of what you see there is related to photo printing, but there's a wealth of info.