Can anyone reccomend me a good printer

[Abhik262]

Hi,

atm im using a lexmark x3580. It drinks ink like a fish and cartridges cost £43 and so i figured it would be better to just buy another printer (funny thing is that PC world still sell the printer for £40).

Can anyone reccommend me a good inkjet printer? Most of the printing i do is black on plain paper with the occasional colour illustration. It is rather important, however, for replacement cartridges to be fairly cheap.

I was looking at some of the kodak printers (the £70 and £99 models) but read some mixed reviews so i wasnt sure.

Any help would be appreciated.

thanks

[peterb]

Rule of thumb is that the cheaper the printer, the more expensive the ink cartridges. If the majority of your printing is monochrome, wha about using a low cost laser for that, and only using an inkjet for illustration?

There have been several threads on printers in the last couple of months - this one might be of use to you:-

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...light=printers

[Dragonclaw]

Have to disagree as i have an expensive Canon which also takes expensive inks!!

[watercooled]

I agree with peterb about getting a cheap laser. With most of them you can print thousands of pages before needing to replace the toner. Granted toner does look expensive at around £50 for a lot of printers (often more - something you might want to check before buying) but that's not a whole lot more than you're paying now really and you get a very low cost per page. You can also pick up decent colour lasers printers for around 100-150 - Samsung do at least one for that price range and while they might print colour slowly that should be fine if you print in mono mainly.

[Abhik262]

sorry, perhaps i worded my sentence wrong. I do a bit more than occasional printing in colour (say one in 5 pages would have a lot of colour and more often than not, each page would usually have a slight splash of colour). What i meant to say was that it was important that text looked good and that the quality of printed images was not a priority if it meant a printer that would have ink bleeding into the page/dropping ink blots.

looking around at other threads, a few canon printers seemed ok, but the ink prices were £29-40 which doesnt really get me anywhere.

thanks and sorry for the confusion.

edit: i also forgot to mention that the printer has to be a multifunction/all in one

[Dragonclaw]

Brother make some nice ones with cheap inks too!

[Abhik262]

Ok guys, i ve decided to settle with a kodak esp 5. £20 off from dixons and some free photo paper is nice too.

[Pob255]

Rule of thumb is that the cheaper the printer, the more expensive the ink cartridges.

Unfortunately the rule of thumb now is, all companies that make printers make there money on the ink/toner not on the base unit.
More expensive printers just tend to have a higher duty cycle but that's all.

If the majority of your printing is monochrome, wha about using a low cost laser for that, and only using an inkjet for illustration?

There have been several threads on printers in the last couple of months - this one might be of use to you:-

http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...light=printers

I'd agree here, a cheap mono-laser may bet the way to go although colour lasers are pritty cheap now as well, although you have to make sure that when you print in mono it is actually only using the black and none of the other colours.

One trend I don't like about printers atm, both inkjet and laser is that if any one toner/ink has run out they will refuse to print untill you replace it even if you're not using that colour.

Also on lasers if a toner is "out" it just refuses to print, on older lasers you can take the tone out give it a good shake and get another 100 pages or so out of it before it's actually out of toner. still that means they can now recover more toner from the cartridges sent back for recycling.

My flatmate recently picked up a Samsung ML-1640 which he's very happy with.

One thing to remember about printers, the "free" toner/ink you get with them is often only half or quarter capasity from normal ones so remember to get a new set of inks/toner as well.
And you very rarely get a usb cable with them or a very short cable, so you may need to get one of them as well. Printers use standard A plug to B plug usb leads.

EDIT:

Ok guys, i ve decided to settle with a kodak esp 5. £20 off from dixons and some free photo paper is nice too.

Just looked at the video sales pitch, man that software looks nasty, the sort of thing I turely hate.
and

"Actual resaults may vary"

"Actual resaults may vary"

"Actual resaults may vary"

"Actual resaults may vary"

"Actual resaults may vary"

[Abhik262]

i wouldnt touch the software either. i installed just the drivers (i have my own programs of OCR and image correction) and its all working fine. When setting it up, i accidentally set the language to dutch, but it was nothing an online translator couldnt handle

[marshalex]

one thing i dont like about the kodak printers is that they go on about how cheap the cartridges are but dont sell seperate colour ink tanks, which could save you a fortune if you only print one colour. personally i would go for the canon mp540, has many good reviews online if you search