Recommend me a printer please.

[Trash Man]

I have been using computers for a fair few years now but I have never owned a printer, so I thought it was about time I got one.

I have a lot of photo's that I have taken with my digi camera over the last year or so that I would like to print out, so the printer would have to be quite good for photos and the odd bit of text work.

I have no idea what to start looking for in a printer so I was hopping that a few of you would make some suggestions.

Cheers.

[Twigman]

I have an HP 990CXi, and it *will* kick the ass of any printer that comes near it...if not it will call back up with its infrared port...lol

Always go HP mate...defo worth it.

[Merlin]

the Epson Photo 830U is a great photo printer, currently selling at about £85

[Austin]

Someone was asking about a printer and scanner, check my comments there. Basically Canon i550 is untouchable. Speed, quietness, quality (text, colour, photo on plain, photo on photo), running costs etc. Not that I trust TomsHW fully but take a look there as they did a roundup.

[Rod911]

I agree with Austin. I have the older S750, previously had an Epson Colour Stylus 400, and it seriously kicked its butt in quality and speed. Printing black and white text in draft mode is nearly as good as normal if you don't look too closely.

[Areku]

Austin is right here again, I have myself the i550 for some time now, printing quality is amazing especially for pics, and the speed is quite fast compared to most other printers.

i550 wins hands down

[directhex]

for color prints, you need an inkjet.

there are 4 manus out there - lexmark, hp, canon & epson.

lexmark, forget them right now. their color accuracy is awful & running costs are astronomical.

epson? well there are many reasons not to go for epson, not least of which the fact that the printers are designed to break down after a short time, and designed to prevent you from using the last 10-35% of the ink in a cartridge. i briefly owned an epson & it was the worst printer i've ever owned.

hp are still the undisputed kings of black & white, but their photo printing is still below par, and running costs on the new series (4 digit) of printers is pretty high.

this leaves canon. i own a canon. the driver support is superb (HP still sell devices which aren't XP compatible), the printer is quiet & cheap & works fine on a network (HP block network printing on all "budget" printers). running costs? official cart for my printer, compatible cart.

in summation, get whichever canon fits yer budget

--jo

[[jF]]

The Epson 900 is supposed to be good and also has Direct CD printing as a bonus - Currently on offer at PC World for £75 atm!

[bigal13]

hi

if i were you i would check out the price of ink for the printer you are thinking of getting as you will see some can be very expensive

i know you can refill with a syringe but that ink is thinner and tends to run out the button of ink cartridge

so i would recommend a Epson 915 photo you can get ink on e-bay 6 colour & 6 black for £27 cheep as chips

[Planetside]

I just got a EPSON 915 and it rocks

[Flibb]

Was looking at this on ebay
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...category=14301
import from US but the price. Am going to find out if they are switchable voltage and how much shipping is to UK.
Does anybodty have a I850??
Cheers
Flibb

[Trash Man]

Thanks very much for the comments peeps

Looks like I just gotta choose how much I wanna spend on a Cannon printer now then

[Austin]

Running costs (ie ink) is not as simple as all that though. You have to factor in how much ink is in the carts, how much the printer uses, how much gets wasted in cleaning cycles, how the printer monitors ink levels and how good/bad the compatible carts tend to be.

Epson are reknowned for wasting loads of ink each time you power the printer on and any time a clean cycle is run. They are also notorious for reporting ink tanks as empty VERY prematurely and making it very hard for you to replace them when the printer isn't prompting you. Other downsides are a noisy feeding mechanism, disgustingly poor fast mode and finally the text quality is pretty poor when compared to Canon or HP.

HP are very good, it took them a long time to catch up. Throwing away the print heads with each empty cart makes the carts very expensive, they also use quite a nasty method of offering better photo quality by using a cludged black+light_colour tank in combination with the normal colours. Nice result but simply not worth it, esp cost-wise.

Lexmarks are just poo, plain and simple. Quality and speed are noticably inferior to the big three and they cost a fortune to run.

The reason I think Canon are so good is great perf in ALL areas. Very fast, very high quality prints (in all areas), very quiet (they even have a night-time mode), great drivers and incredibly cheap to run. Most compatible carts are top notch, I've found Jettec to be absolutely as good as Canon branded ones. Canon also seem to care more for the older printers too, HP and Epson are so slow on this (drivers eg for WinXP).

PS. Don't bother refilling as it involves a whole world of problems including damage to the printer, not worth it esp if you choose wisely in the first place. Flibb IIRC Canon i850 is simply a faster version of the i550 and has the tiny 2pl droplet size ... probably THE best inkjet printer you can get. Watch out if it's designed for the US though, power lead etc.

[Trash Man]

Anyone know anywhere that stocks the i550?

Found every other printer on the planet apart from that one, it's not even listed on kelko

[Austin]

If you can't find it then consider the current i450 which is basically the same but slower and a little more pricey to run (still way lower than Epson or HP) ... on the plus side you do get 2pl droplet size which gives awesome quality (even better than the i550). Also look out for 2nd hand S750 ... as said that's 99% as good as i550 ... the i550 was based on it!

[Trash Man]

So a i450 is just as good as the i550 but slower? I can handle slower, it's not gonna get used a great deal anyhows so I am not to bothered about how much the ink is either.

I'll start looking for the i450 then

EDIT

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...=47827&_LOC=UK

Is that the right one? Seems a little cheap for a decent printer, but then again I do know nout about printers.