I need a new printer

[a nameless entity]

I rather favour the Epson brand, because my photographic printer is an Epson 2200, which is an awesome printer for printing photos, but not so great for ordinary documents. The ink is way too expensive for wasting on throw away stuff, besides. However some Epson models borrow some of the metalized ink technology the 2200 uses, which is good when you want to print a document that won't fade over time. Also I don't care that Epson's tend to be slower than HP or Canon printers. Anything that's faster than a dot matrix printer is really speedy in my opinion. (Remember how long those things took to print a single page? And how awful it looked?)
What I really want is one of those all in one units. I'd love to be able to scan some old photos I made the hard way years ago, -in the dark room.
I am aware that the printers that go for next to nothing at places like Best Buy every now and then kill you with ink costs, so I'd be willing to spend a little more in order to save in the long run.

I wouldn't mind being able to print some of my own stuff like this, too!

[Hermskii]

I have an Epson All In One Printer and I'm pretty OK with it. It is an Epson Stylus CX9400Fax. Here is a link where you can get it and ink real cheap:

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywor ... lvkwvm5n_b

I don't know if it meets your quality standards but I don't print that much so I just don't know squat about quality or caring.

If quality really matters, find a color lazer printer. I like the Brother brand along with Kyocera and Lexmark.

[Scify]

Last print I bought was Kodak 5300. It can be wireless if you want it.Cost ink is $29.99 for Kodak - Ink Cartridge Combo Pack - Black/Multicolor .I got new PC the HP wouldn't work on it.
Here is cheapest and new one for Kodak
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Kodak+-+Her ... Id=3117347

ink cost it cheaper than mine $27.99
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Kodak+-+30+ ... Id=2383045

Best thing to do go to store Ask somebody

[David]

I have a Brother MFC-7840W 5-1 Laser Wi-Fi Printer.

brother_printer.jpg

The toner is not too bad, approximately $30 if you go through eBay. I use it mostly for the copier, scanner, and fax function. It prints great, but I have a HP laserjet that I use as a main printer. We enjoy the wi-fi feature. I have it in my kitchen hooked to the hone line for the fax function and I able to connect to the printer via wi-fi anywhere in the house (even upstairs). Very dependable printer/machine

The 7840 has been discontinued for a newer model which is 7860DW

[*POTS*]

I got new PC the HP wouldn't work on it.

I have an HP Deskjet 3820 which is nearly 10 years old.
It still works fine and is quite reliable, but it's nearly impossible to find the original cartridges anymore, plus they've always been very expensive (35 € each, and you need a black + a color one).
Like Scify said, it just has basic support on newer PCs using Vista/7.
The good thing about it is the fact you're still able to print, even if the cartridge has been installed and not used for a year or so (but a cartridge cleaning process is needed via software).

If you don't print that often, go for an InkJet one, otherwise would be best to buy a laser printer IMO.

[Scify]

When i got mine new PC I had choice XP or window 7.I When with Xp because my printer was for XP. I install printer.Didn't work.I remove it try again still didn't work . I download software from HP.That didn't work.That printer drive me crazy anyway I had too install it every year.

[Hook]

I have an HP 842c inkjet printer that came with my comp back in 1999.
It is probably a lot like POTS's printer.
Still runs great - the whole system! (comp and all)

[a nameless entity]

My old HP 722 ran fine until last year. Then it started getting noisy. The cartridge carrier would bang against the sides of the printer while it operated. I also noticed the drive belt was so old that it was beginning to fray. Finally, the black cartridge failed. I pulled it out, but am reluctant to buy a new one since they're expensive, and the printer may be broken or will break anyway. I have a brand new colour cartridge still in the box for the HP 722 family if anyone needs one.

One nice thing about HP printers is, or used to be, that the printer nozzles were in the cartridge. My Epson 2200 has fixed ink nozzles, and I must check them every now and then. If a cleaning cycle doesn't work, then you have to try cleaning them by hand, and if that fails the printer has to be done by a technician. If an HP fails, you just buy a new cartridge. So far my Epson has been ok though.

What I really want the most is the scanner in the all-in-one that I hope to buy whenever I get around to it.

I'd also like to get one of those confetti type shredders for a cheap price, but they sell out immediately whenever they go on sale for a reasonable price.

[a nameless entity]

Well just before Xmas Staples put an Epson Workforce 435 all-in-one on sale for $59.99.
I ordered one at the start of business at 9 a.m. on the day the sale went into effect because I was sure they would be sold out by the afternoon, going by past experience. That was a Saturday, and sure enough it was delivered on the following Tuesday as promised.

I had to buy a 10' A/B type USB cable for it. Installation was time consuming, but easy. I also liked the way you can actually get these devices out of the boxes without a terrific struggle with the packaging, nowadays.

It is the smallest and cheapest designed for business use machine in the Epson line. It has separate ink tanks for each of the four colours, which is exactly what I wanted. It also uses the latest Epson fade proof and fast drying ink technology, which I know from my Epson 2200 photographic printer to be awesome stuff.

Another plus is that it uses the same CMYK four colour ink printing technique that the magazine industry has used for decades. (The 3 primary colours in this system are Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. Black is used to help with shading in the dark areas of a reproduced photograph, since the pigments in the primary colours have a bit of difficulty making black blacks. Go here for a more than you might have wanted to know explanation. )

What this means is that you can probably print your digital photos through this printer onto proper ink jet photo paper, and get at least magazine quality prints. And the inks won't fade in your life time.

I set the printer up late last night, so all I have printed so far is the test page. It turned out fine. Soon I will test it with some text only documentation, and then I will print a digital photograph onto photo ink jet paper. I will also print the photo with my Epson 2200, and then do a comparison. I will then report my findings back here.

If my guess is correct, this printer will make for an awesome all in one home use device.

[Hermskii]

Congrats on your purchase Nameless. It sounds like you are in for a lot of fun with your new toy. Good luck!

[a nameless entity]

Well I had a bad moment there when I went to print an old text document I have and nothing was happening. It turns out the printer seems to have "forgotten" the day and date, and went to default setting. Or maybe it just changed the date format. I pressed the button to skip resetting and it printed the document. Does this mean I have to leave the printer on all the time for it to remember what the day and date is? Can't it talk to the PC and find out what it is?

Another oddity is the fact that windoze thinks the printer is a usb portable device only temporarily plugged in. I realize why that happened during installation because you're not supposed to plug the cable into the printer until the software is completely installed. But why is it still that way again today? Because I turned the printer on after I started booting up the PC?

But it prints ok, and that's all that matters.

Next I printed a colour and b&w document with text and illustrations. It did a nice job.

Then I printed a test photo montage that a photographer posted on the internet for anyone to use when they are fine tuning a printer for maximum accuracy. It took a very long time to print, as I was using "best photo" quality and premium glossy paper.
As I expected the colour rendition and sharpness was good and very good. Skin tones were very nicely rendered. The tonal range of white to black was very good.

The Epson 2200 printed the photograph much more quickly. Settings were as near to identical as the software will allow. No doubt about it, 7 ink pots vs 4 will win every time. The 2200 showed better colours and range, better blacks, richer skin tones, and better gray tones to white.

However, you must have the prints side by side to see the improvements. As it was already dark outside at 5pm when I made the prints, they have been compared under artificial fluorescent light. Tomorrow I will compare them in daylight and see if the differences are more obvious.
But for now I can safely say that for every day use with only occasional photo printing, the Epson Workforce 435 is very adequate indeed. Be prepared to buy new ink pots though, if you ever find yourself doing a lot of photo printing at top quality. Top quality easily rivals anything a photo finisher can give you, but does cost you in ink.

As the test photo was "freeware", I will gladly upload it into this thread if anyone would like to have it. However it is 3.53 MB in size and should not be dumbed down, so Herm will have to temporarily allow larger files.

[Hermskii]

Are you saying it was rejected or something? I did not know i had a size limit set.

[a nameless entity]

I think you did a few months ago. Let's see.......

Well there you go.

[a nameless entity]

Well what a difference daylight makes. Using fluorescent bulbs as a light source for evaluation is dodgy at best. They are not continuous spectrum emitters, and give off a lot of green light. I'm looking forward to cheap LED light bulbs at some point in the future, because they can simulate daylight nicely.

Daylight revealed that the 435 print had a yellow cast. It was obvious by the yellow cast in the gray tones. The 435 did a slightly better job with the two darkest shades of black in the gray scale along the bottom. The 2200 gave a more even set of gray tones with no colour cast. Both had clean whites.
The colours in the 435 print were more robust than the 2200's, yellow cast or no. Depending on which print you would choose as the standard to measure by, the 435 was either a bit garish, or the 2200's was a bit anemic.

Surprisingly, the 435 rendered the skin tones better. They were yellower, but that would be a matter of taste as to whether that was good or bad. The 2200's rendition of the skin tones was definitely weaker. Very anemic looking by comparison. I was unhappy. I am going to be checking to see if there are newer drivers available from Epson. I will also be checking to see if there are new ICC profiles on offer. I know there are custom profiles out there on the internet. I ran a set for a while. I will look again. If this doesn't fix the problem, then the 2200 may need a tune up from a technician.

The 2200 showed slightly better resolution in the rendering of fine hairs, and eyelashes. Modern Canon and Epson photo printers have much smaller ink droplet technology than my aging 2200, so a print from one of them would look that much better again in that regard.

The bottom line: I am really happy that I held out for an Epson printer that uses their superior ink technology. That a printer that cost less than $80 after tax and the separate purchase of a 10' A/B USB cable could come this close to the quality of a proper photographic printer that cost >10x more when new, and surpass it in a couple of areas is astounding. I am blown away. If you need a new all in one printer soon, you should definitely consider one of these Epson Workforce models.

p.s. It's all in the inks. Epson does or used to make cheaper inks for other printers that are not fade resistant. If price is an object, wait for a Workforce model to go on sale. Then only put genuine Epson inks into it. You can buy refill kits, and "refurbished cartridges" filled with generic trash inks that will work, but defeat the whole point of the exercise. You might just as well buy a Lexmark or HP printer to begin with, then.

p.p.s If you have read all or most of this thread, thanks. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed talking about this subject.

[Hermskii]

So Nameless is a big print quality guru. Hmmm? Is there also a medical term for this like the term on the farside cartoon naming the fear of being chased around a kitchen table while wearing only socks on a freshly waxed floor or something like that? LOL.

So you got to read up on my printer I suspect. Is it any good? When I need a printer, I just walk in and find the first 3 that do everything I want. Then I pay for the middle one.