Good printer?

Vhdblood

Alright, I feel kinda bad asking another question on the same day, and it not being in the same thread as the first one, but anyway.

My mother just called me and told me that she wants a printer to go with her computer (the one I handed down to her when I got this new one). She said something about a Kodak printer, because she wants to print pictures, and she said it's just in her price range, sitting at around $200.

My question is, is this a good printer? Is it worth the $200? Can you recommend a better printer in the $200 price range?

Apreche

Is she going to ever need to print color?

...

Firstly, don't feel bad about asking. Same day or not. As for the thread, this is a different subject, so different thread is appropriate.

Anyways, I know nothing about the current state of the printer market, but make sure you know how often she wants to print pictures (photo's I take it), and the quality she wants. Also, if you can, check the prices of new cartridges. They are not all priced equally, and you cannot mix them afaik. So if you can, cheaper cartridges will be beneficial, even more so if she wants to print 100 photo's/day. Also look into paper, standard A4 paper isn't that awesome for photo's.

Basically this all boils down to: (Re)Search, can't help ya, sorry.

Vhdblood

Yeah, in the original post, I meant to say photos, which would imply color. I have looked into it a bit, but I know that sometimes I can get a better answer from a community with such a large technical crowd. Also, I know Steve reviews products, so I thought he might have known.

As for your questions Nineless, I'm not sure how often she wants to print pictures, but every now and then she gets e-mails and she'll want to print them then. It's kinda sporratic when she gets those e-mails though, so I'm not sure, but it's definitely not 100 a day. Maybe 10 a week would be closer. The cartridge thing does bring up a good point. I know they can be crazy expensive. Can you use those refill kits on photo printers? Maybe another thing to think about would be a dual-mode printer? I don't know if such a thing exists, but it may have two sets of cartridges, one setting for black and white documents with cheap cartridges, and one setting for high-quality photo printouts with expensive cartridges. I think it would be a huge waste to have to use those expensive cartridges for plain documents.

Also, we don't have a printer right now, so basic documents will most likely need to be printed out.

Apreche

If you want to print photos or color at all, it will be crazy expensive. Also, your mom probably is not some photo nut who will notice or care about any small quality difference. Nor do I think your mom cares about Linux compatibility. That leaves really only two choices.

Choice 1 is to get an inkjet. The advantages are that they are cheap up front, less than $100 even. However, in the long run you will pay out the ass for ink cartridges. Also, since they are so cheap, you might have to buy a new printer in a few years.

Choice 2 is a color laser printer. This, of course, will be very expensive up front. Many hundreds of dollars for the printer itself. The toner is also expensive and such. However, the pricer per-page is very cheap. You won't have to replace that toner for years probably. So even though a toner cartridge is more expensive than an ink cartridge, it is actually a lot cheaper in the long run. Also, the printer will last for over a decade, if not longer.

That is the only meaningful decision you really have to make. There are differences between different makes and models. However, it is very unlikely that your mom will actually care about or notice any of those differences. Either get the cheapest color deskjet, or the cheapest color laser printer from NewEgg/Staples/Best Buy.

Norvu

I have a Epson R300, an inkjet printer.



It's served me well for years now and can even print directly onto printable discs, which is always nice for various reasons. It has 6 different ink cartridges; Black, Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta and Yellow. If you buy the official Epson cartridges, yeah, it'll cost a fortune every time you need to replace a single colour (since you won't be able to print at all if, even 1 colour is out), probably $10 a cartridge. However, you can get non-official ones that work just as well for a heck of a lot cheaper.

I can get a set of all 6 colours for £5, which is $10 I believe. You might be able to find it cheaper over there.

It is meant for photo's, so printing text-only documents can take longer than most, but, if she wants a good printer that can print onto a nice glossy piece of paper well, this is it.

HMTKSteve

Go with an HP or Cannon color printer that takes separate cartridges for each color.

Staples/Office Max will give you a couple bucks off when you bring in empty cartridges to buy new ones. I have an HP photo printer at home that has media card slots right on it so you can print without a computer.

I can buy a 6-pack of colors for it with 100 4x6 photo blanks for under $30. Staples then gives me about $3 off for each empty I bring in so I save $18 off of that $30 so it only costs me $12 to refill it with colors and have more blanks for printing photographs! Granted some colors run out more often than others but, on the whole, we get by for real cheap.

I can not reccomend Epson printers anymore after my last one crapped out in Widnows (still works fine under Linux) and started printing banding lines behind everything. I tried to contact Epson support over it and was told I was out of warranty and could not get support. I replied to them that warranty or not if the printer is broken it should be broken on all of my machines, not just my Windows one!

Vhdblood

Okay, since my mom doesn't plan on printing many photos, and wants to be able to print documents too, I think that she can just load the pictures on a card and print them at the Wal-mart booth. They are cheap enough there to warrant it.

So that means that I'm basically looking for a cheap printer that only prints black and white now. What would be the best solution considering this?

...

As for your questions Nineless,

XD Those are questions you have to ask yourself when you go out to buy a printer. Like I said, I no nothing about the current printer market situation, so even with your answers I can't do a thing. Anyways, listen to Scott, Norvu and Steve, and the Geeknights episode on printers perhaps. Good luck.

EDIT:

So that means that I'm basically looking for a cheap printer that only prints black and white now. What would be the best solution considering this?

Cheapest ass inkjet printer and setting the printer on grayscale. One single black cartridge once in a while isn't that bad.

Vhdblood

Lol. Yeah, after I posted that, I kinda realized that, but I figured I might as well go with it.

HMTKSteve

Yep, get the cheapest ink jet you can find but also keep in mind the price of ink cartridges. Saving $50 on a printer but having to spend $25 per cartridge is not worth it.

am_dragon

Look at the Canon Pixma Printers, I got one for $100, (IP4300). We mainly use it for printing photos, and we are very happy with the results. There are 6 ink cartridges and retail is around $11 each. Over the year we have replaced 4 of the cartridges so far. I would say tell her to get something like that and save the extra $100 for cartridges.

My parents are really happy with using Picasa to send pictures to Wal-Mart and just picking them up later. I would guess that is far cheaper than buying a printer.

At least twice my dad has gone to buy an ink cartrige and found there was a printer, with ink, at Staples cheaper than replacing the ink in the printer he had. So he buys the new printer and throws the old one away.

Apreche

So that means that I'm basically looking for a cheap printer that only prints black and white now. What would be the best solution considering this?

Get the cheapest black and white USB laser printer you can find. We have a Samsung ML-2010, which is fine. There are many equivalent products on the market.

dnguyen411

I worked in sales for Canon and Xerox Printers for a few years (yes, I was one of those bastard Canon Reps at Best Buy). From my experience, you will never go wrong with an HP or Canon Inkjet printer. The HPs are good workhorse printers and will do everything with decent to high quality. Ink cartridges are pricey but you can get them refilled. Canon printers have the reputation of being a very good photo printer and decent on text. I like the individual ink cartridges but they are so small that if you do a lot of printing you end up going out to buy ink cartridges more often. Epsons are nice for photos as well but I was never happy with the regular text.

This may be my bias working for me, but I wouldn't recommend getting a Lexmark Inkjet. Their cartridges are the most expensive and they tend to oversaturate the paper trying to print photos. I brought my laptop into Best Buy one time and did a test photo print on every brand's best photo inkjet in the store and the Lexmark's prints were not only slow but felt like you were picking up a soaked piece of paper. Text was jagged in some areas or, like photos, over saturated the paper. Lexmark may have changed their technology in the last 4 years but I haven't read any good reviews or talked to anyone that has printed a photo with a newer Lexmark printer.