Printer choice

[ffutures]

After a lot of reflection I've decided to go with the Canon duplexing mono printer; at an effective price of £50 after cashback it works out at about 2.5p per page with the starter cartridge, 2p a page with high capacity cartridges. The last colour laser I looked at was very tempting, but in the end I think I have to accept that colour isn't something I need very often; I may buy myself a cheap inkjet for occasional colour work, I haven't decided yet.

The bottom line, I think, is that if this turns out to be a bad move I'm only out £50 (and possibly the price of an inkjet later), and have numerous family members who could make use of e.g. the mono laser if I do eventually decide I need colour for my main printer.

Later - looking at cheap inkjets, Staples are doing the HP deskjet 1000 for about £20 inc. VAT. Anyone know anything about them?

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

So which model would you recommend?

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Any you can find at a reasonable price that takes the 300 cartridge, and does everything you need. =:o}

Internally, the machines that take a given cartridge type(*) are all basically the same printer so should give exactly the same quality; it's just the additional features list that changes - i.e. does it have wireless; can it take other types of memory cards besides SD; is the preview/feedback screen tiny or a bit bigger; can it edit pictures that are fed to it on an SD card before printing them; does it have the fancy big control panel that looks a bit like, and has most of the power of, a small tablet PC... If you're just using it as a printer-scanner as a peripheral to a PC, then apart from wireless none of those things matter. If you're a photographer who'd like to print his work directly from an SD card without touching the PC, then the extra features on the higher models may be useful.

*(At the low-end that is. The more business-oriented and/or serious photography printers get more actual design variation, but that's why they cost anything from 5 to 20 times as much! Basically, the low-end is machines that use the two-cartridge system (one black, one colour). The high end is where you're using 4 or or more cartridges, which from what you've said would be overkill for your purposes. The printer and scanner mechanisms are mass produced to fit into a standard shaped housing, and then slight variations on that housing are moulded to accomodate the different feature sets that need to be bolted on for different models / price-points.)

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Slight caveat: Maximum DPI. That's one thing that *does* change within a range of printers that affects the *maximum* quality achievable. That said, even on my old model, I find the improvement given by going up from 300 to 600DPI isn't worth the slow down and the extra ink used. I can't tell the difference between 1200 and 2400DPI except on the highest quality photographs. But if your eyes are sharper than mine or you work a lot with fine print, you may disagree.

DPI is quoted as X x Y, indicating width-wise versus length-wise. The lower figure of the two is the one that will have the more obvious effect, so you can ignore the bigger one when comparing printers.

Gosh, this has been a useful refresher course for me! It's months since I was last left in charge of the printer section instead of the till... =;o}

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes, but since I don't actually have HP's catalogue memorized, can you suggest any that are a simple small printer-only model?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Sorry, just saw your message below - I'm after a small one because it would get in the way less, with a second printer around. Also, the flatter paper path of e.g. the Deskjet 1000 could be handy.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

A stray thought: One exception to the "all the same, same quality" rules is the difference between printers with scanners and those without. The ones with scanners will tend to give slightly better quality simply because they're *heavier*, so there mechanism iasn't so subject to random vibrations. Also, it's less like to gradually walk across your table and fall on the floor!

Almost all the printers bought these days have scanners in them, simply 'cos the price difference is marginal. The "printer only" versions tend to be bought more for kids bedrooms or cramped student accomodation. =:o}