Recommend a printer

[Digsy]

Ok, I'm fed up with my printer. It’s a cheapy Lexmark job with two inkjet cartridges (numbers 17 and 27 IIRC). The thing is, I hardly ever use my pritner so every single time I do actually try to print something out I find that the nozzles on the cartridge have blocked up and cannot be cleaned out. Therefore I wind up paying £30 per cartridge to print one or two pages, then they just block up again by the time I want to print some more.

 

Short of buying a laser printer or something (which is really overkill for what I need) is there a better print cartridge type / make or something that will suit my "very occaisional user" style better? I probably could have bought an office size laser / copier / scanner for the oney I've spent on cartridges now!

 

My girlfriend's printer never seems to suffer from this. She has an HP Photosmart job. It’s a good printer and doesn't seem to suffer from drying out, but I'm a bit loathe to just buy one of these because HP printers seem to need all sorts of rubbish running in your system tray just to work (plus its constantly popping up reminders that there are new softawre updates available). It’s a pain in the backside. I want a printer to just sit there quitely, do its stuff, and then dissappear again.

[Lbm]

I used Epsoms but found they were a bit crap/unreliable etc. I moved over to Canon (mine's a couple of years old now- ip4000) and it's been great.

 

Speedy printing for letters, lovely printing for photos, and it prints directly onto printable CDs, so no need for those cheap CD sticky label things.

 

My model also has 5 ink cartridges, 2 black & 3 primary colours, making replacing ink better value.

 

Canon- check them out.

Most domestic printers in recent years have been and still are stupidly cheap- it's the consumables that are expensive over time, but I guess you already know that

[Digsy]

Do the Canon cartridges tend to dry out if they are not regularly used?

[stevie_b]

I wouldn't think that your girlfriend's HP *needs* the system tray / nagware stuff in order for it to work. When you install an HP printer from the CD they supply, it installs all manner of stuff onto your PC. Applications to keep track of your photos seem de-rigeur at the moment.

 

To test this, I would connect to your girlfriend's printer, and then add it to your PC using the "Start > Printer and Faxes > Add Printer" method instead of letting the CD autorun and install all that bloat. Pop the CD in the drive so that you can browse to it when Add Printer asks for a driver for the printer you want to add.

 

IMO this is worth the bother, because HP printers (minus the bloatware they come with) seem to be very good.

[Soop Dogg]

  Digsy said:

Do the Canon cartridges tend to dry out if they are not regularly used?

 

Nope. I've gone for a couple of months without doing any printing and never had to use a cleaning utility once.

 

The gadget show did a review on printers recently. They got a stack of printers and rated their quality of photo printing first of all. Then the top ten of those were assessed for how much it cost per page to print.

 

For quality, cost of printing etc. the Canon Pixma IP4600 came in at No2 and the Canon MP630 was No1. Not a bad result for Canon then! Link to part of the episode here: Gadget Show

 

Up until about 18 months ago, I used Epson, but the heads gummed up after a couple of days without use and the cleaning utility used most of the ink and didn't normally clear the blockage in one attempt so it was stupid expensive. The Canon IP4200 that I use now is quite, reliable and decent quality without having to spend loads of money.

[Digsy]

Book!

 

I'm a bit of a Canon fan on the sly, so I'll check out their range.