PC Printers (OT but I value your advice)

Doh! You remind me of my son. "Just print a sheet once a week. Do you understand? It's costing me a fortune replacing cartridges in your printer because you don't listen." Seriously, do make a point of printing out a colourful ( if it is a colour printer) once a week. It will help avoid this situation.

Not an inkjet - get a laser printer. Precise model I'll leave to others.

cheers, clive

Do you reall need colour? Good quality mono laser printers are so inexpensive now.

Peter Crosland

Low cost Black & White Laser, Brother do one about for 65 pounds. Take your digital pictures to Boots (on a USB dongle) and use their machine.

R.

This is my choice

Seconded. I've had to do no maintenance on my colour laser on over two years, apart from changing a black cartridge. With an inkjet it was jet cleaning and cartridge replacement every few weeks. And the laser gives better prints, which are waterproof too.

There's a good selection around and under £200 now, and the running costs are much lower than inkjets, which could mitigate the extra purchase cost.

until early to mid February and yo might find the same bargain.

Dave

ps I have an epsom photo printer and I usually ask it to do a nozzle check every week. Saves the cost of a new cartridge every time the nozzles get clogged up.

Been there, done that. IME Epson are highly overrated. Got a Canon and would never buy another Epson. Canon are more expensive to buy but with separate carts at just over a quid, much cheaper to run and nowhere near as prone to clogging as Epson. It did block once when I left it next to a radiator unused for a couple of months but you van whip the print head out, stand it in a saucer of glass cleaner for an hour, run a cleaning cycle and you're back in business.

John As an alternative to the laser technology - and I will admit to having gone down that way once and found it an expensive mistake - can I suggest you take a look at the HP printers that use the Continuous Ink System ( I've a HP 3210). You do then get the advantage of a scanner and copier too.

The ink in these printers is continuously circulated such that the jets do not jam up and the 'cleaning' ink is recovered meaning there is no wastage. Mine doesn't get used on occasions for several weeks and when it is powered up, there's a bit of whirring and then it just prints perfectly every time.

If you go to Inkjet Revolution, they will supply you with an external ink pack which gives you so much ink that the running cost is near enough zero.

Rob

Colour or monochrome? As others have said if you only need monochrome ge= t a laser, I bought a HP LJ1200 a few years back and it has been excellent= , much better print quality that is water resistant (if not proof). I get =

through a toner cartridge about every 18 months two years at a cost of around =A350. It almost got replaced earlier in the year when the film around the fuser started to breakup at one end but I found you can get replacement films for =A335 all in.

I also have a colour Epson and suffer like you from infrequent use and blocked nozzles. If the LJ1200 had gone to the scrap heap it would have =

been replaced with a colour laser of some sort.

For colour photographs, there are plenty of online places where you can =

upload your images and get them printed properly and delivered for very =

similar prices to home printing.

Well options are, stick with the Epson and use it more often (I have a

Or look at a laser printer - mono ones are silly money now. If you need business class colour (i.e. not super slick glossy photo output) something like a Samsung CLP 300N takes some beating - a colour network laser at under £150 - and the running costs are not bad either.

Last two laser printers I bought were really silly money - 7 pounds the pair off eBay! (local, so about 3 quid in petrol to collect them).

I still use them - HP LaserJet 4+ both of them. PostScript, 12 ppm. Power consumption is a little higher, and complex pages take a bit longer, but a third example has been running here for eight years.

Before too much longer the printer will assume the "overflow sponge" is close to being soaked full of ink and stop printing altogether and request a return to the factory for a new one.

I agree the Cannon doesn't seem to block so readily as the Epson, but if anything the running costs are higher. It seems to use more ink on the cleaning routine. Not so easy to re-fill either.

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

I haven't been to Peter Maude's site for ages, you might like to take a look

If you want color, you pay for it.

They are all without exception average to crap.

At lest yours doesn't do what mine did. I changed cartridges, threw the old one away (BIG mistake) only to have the thing light up like a christmas tree. much googling later I found a manual online - bad cartridge. BUT I had bought it two years before, and never used it. 30 quid down the drain.

It was the yellow one. I ONLY wanted to print black and white anyway. Bastards.

Are there by gum. I'll have to look into that..

Trouble is SWMBO wants an A3/..

Then sit back and admire the muddy colour, inability to produce a smooth colour gradient and the impressively high running costs. See, see, see the paper crawl. Crawl crawl paper slowly on the way to be printed, four time times through the print engine.

Great if you only want to view your print for a week then they fade away...