i need a new printer. i am sick of epson. ideas?

i want a large format- a3, photo printer, with archival inks. i have an epson r1800 right now, i am sick of this ink eating machine. actually sick of the whole ink scam, but....
so, i am thinking of making the jump to a canon pixma, but doubt i will be much happier with the canon ink scam.

comments? ideas?

Might be discontinued now.



I have a Pixma ip90 for travel, but the darn cartridges dry up too often from lack of regular use.

it just isn't the same for photos.
the regular use thing is a problem for me, also.

They get you on ink no matter which brand you choose. I pay less for the ink on my cannon than any of the other branded products around the office. And it actually keeps printing untill the tanks are dry, unlike our Samsung and Brother products, which cut out after a specified number of uses, or when the sensor reads a certain level.

it finally died so I bought a well reviewed Canon. It lasted less than a year before it quit on me. I bought another HP and it's still going srong after 3 years. Your mileage may vary.

Got it for abooot $135.

The wireless is great when we've got the laptops in bed - fire off a printout downstairs. Curiously, it has as long a range as the router and I put the 10" rabbit ears on the router for extra range. I've used it from the back yard with no problem, even when the router signal was down to "one bar" level.

I've beat the living shit out of HP printers and they keep going. I still have an original Office Jet LX (what, 1995 or so?) and it still works. There aren't any XP, Vista, or Win7 drivers for it, but I still use it on my 95 and 98 machines. It is WAY past its service life and still going - AND you can still get ink for it! Epson, Cannon, and Lexmark have all terminated older cartridges but for all of the old printers I've got I've never had an HP that I couldn't find ink for. DRIVERS are the issue - and that's true for all printer manufacturers. I think they're in bed with M$ on that one.

had a guy basically tell me i was a liar on one call. i have a laser, my second. the first one said it handled cardstock. in fact, the paper type menu included settings for very heavy stock. but it handled jack shit. and since i wasn't using hp paper, they insisted it was my fault. but seriously, i told them what was in the menu, and they insisted that i was wrong. even tho i was looking right at the menu.
trying to get through was a trip, also.

but maybe they are the way to go. i have to admit i haven't really had other problems.
the machine does refuse to use anyone else's carts, tho. gives me a message saying i am voiding my warranty, worded like i can use them if i like, but the thing just refuses.
it also tells me the carts are empty, but when i went to refill one, there was almost as much toner in this "empty" cart as there was in the refill bottle. it wouldn't take the refill with either of the chips i bought.
a load of bs.
this inkjet is just as bad, tho. in fact, the reason i am shopping is that the thing wont even recognize brand new epson carts.

On the plus side, you rarely need tech support for HP printers. If you do, God help you, or so I've heard. I've never had a problem with an HP printer, and I've got ten of them in service right now and several 95/98 era HP printers I pull out when I'm using one of those machines. I have a small computer museum in the basement.

The PC/laptop support is unmatched in the industry. You get through to someone who knows the product (and speaks English) in very little time and they'll do damn near anything to solve your problem. The worst is easily Dell. They've always sucked.

Now as far as dot matrix printers go, you'll find Okidata printers in service all over the place at auto parts stores. I've still got a working wide-carriage Panasonic and a functional 24 pin Epson. In the weird department, I've got an 80lb NEC Spinwriter from 1978 or so. It has a "thimble" with characters on the vertical spokes and a firing pin in the center. The thimble spins to the character and the firing pin makes the imprint. It does 55 cps, which was lightening fast for an impact printer back then.

I worked for a company that performed quality testing on consumer inkjet printers... And, Canons were always my personal favorite.

Also, Canon ink replacement cartridges are just ink and do not include the print-head like HP cartridges.

The Pixma printers are fast and give great quality... I want to buy the Pixma 9000 or 9500 sometime soon.

:D

Here's an excellent review site and article on the Canon Pro9000 Mark II, released earlier this year.

Here's their section on printers.

me it was time to changer the lazer printer cartridge. It has been a year of ignoring that command and it still works fine. I know printer companies make all their money off of the ink they sell (why the printers themselves are so cheap) but I think that is just really deplorably dishonest.

run past empty is not an option on them anymore. grrrrrrrr.

i seriously tried to talk my son into tinkering with the drivers so that i could ignore those warnings. someone should.

Bulk ink systems have special cartridges, tanks on the back of the printer and plumbing between the two. Save you lots of money.

i had one of those, and it ran amuck. dumped a bunch of ink.
it refused to recognize it after a while, anyway. which is why i want to put a bullet through it.
it doesn't work well, which is why i am looking to replace it.

besides, i have yet to find a replacement ink that is archival.

had any problems with the bulk-ink system. (The printer itself was another matter, with the constant cleaning and famous Epson "magenta pollution. But those problems were already there BEFORE I went to the bulk tanks.)

Redstone

what a great old workhorse that thing was.
the trouble with this thing is the supposed level monitors, which actually are there to prevent you from using other people's ink. they do not tell you when the cart is empty- they tell you when you should fork over for a new cart, just because. if it deigns to let you use an aftermarket cart, it will likely tell you it is empty after a dozen or so prints.
i had a lot of trouble with the bulk ink, both with acceptance, and with leakage. it kept printing after i removed it, but it did start barking about everything, and blowing a whole, whole lot of ink on nozzle checks. the real pisser in that was that you would replace one cart, it would blow the heads, then another would beep, replace that one, blow some more, etc, etc, until that first cart is half gone. next thing you know, you are $50 poorer. and you can't print your thing until you go to the store.

...short version of the story is that I had the HP with a Windows 98 PC, and when I purchased a new XP PC, the HP wasn't compatible.

So I got an Epson, and the prints were AMAZING.

And, like you said, it drank ink.

But that wasn't the biggest problem. Early in its life cycle, I'd start to get streaks or ink blots on prints, so I'd do the head cleaning, which drank even MORE ink, and it got to the point where something just ruptured and cleaning was impossible.

So I bought another Epson.

And it DID THE SAME THING, only SOONER than the PREVIOUS one.

I don't have an inkjet right now, just my Samsung laser. Eventually I will get another inkjet, but it will be an HP. Yes, their ink was expensive. But I never had the streaking and hemorrhaging issues I had with Epson.

:toast:

all-in-one that bragged about cheap cartridges.

Ink is dirt cheap because they don't put the printhead in the cartridge. Worked great for a while, but then stopped printing reds. Then stopped printing black. I never did find out whether it was a driver going batty or the built-in printhead breaking. Seems more like a driver if it won't print reds, but now it's sitting there in a corner and I'm back using the lasers and an old HP.

I mention this because it printed fast and beautifully when it worked, and the Kodak printers are cheap enough to experiment with should it be that I just got a lemon. Dunno if the ink was archival, but whose is, anyway.

My HPs never failed me-- just cost a lot more in ink.

sad, because print quality should be good from kodak, and so should lifespan on the prints. but all the reviews are that they suck.

at least in the low end market where I "live". Had two of them before learning my lesson. Have a cannon and am VERY happy with it.

even when it tries to tell me a cartridge is empty I just hit print again and it goes on and on.

Never had any problems with it, still haven't used all its features after 4 years...


mark

They make good stuff.

i am looking at canons. but i do not know how the "revered" lucia inks stack up against the epson or hp inks.

I have quite a few prints I made in my son's babyhood that still look like new.

He's eight and a half, the prints still look new and the printer still works like the day I took it out of the box.

no good ideas, but I feel your pain.

much less ink expense than Epson. Epson seems to rip folks off more than other companies..