Jeff Smith 1 Loc: Pocono Mountains, PA

May I have your recommendations for a printer that produces quality photos, yet is relatively inexpensive (ink-wise) when used to print out B&W text documents?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Jeff

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

That would be "None", Jeff.
The printers often cost less than the first cartridge replacements. :evil:

Years ago, I was browsing in a Fry's Electronics. They literally had rows of printers on display.
So I began opening them to look at the ink tanks of the cartridges.
HP won the contest. Biggest damned tanks on the floor, at that time.
Later, my Daughter in WA State and I were talking and she pointed out that (at the time) she like HP because they used oil based inks. And she felt their ink held the color better over time in printed pictures.
We currently have two HP's here in our home office.
An 8600 we bought, and an HP Photosmart 7520 that the kids gave us for Christmas so Mom could print any pictures she wanted.
Both will print very acceptable pictures up to 8 X 10's.

But buying ink can really be a burdon. ;)
Good Luck in your quest! :D

Xantoz Loc: Delaware

Canon Pixma.

Jeff Smith 1 Loc: Pocono Mountains, PA

Thanks for your input and recommendations, Sonny. It certainly is a challenge.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

I don't use my photo printer to print documents, the ink is too expensive. I got the cheapest laser printer I could find.

Jeff Smith 1 Loc: Pocono Mountains, PA

Thanks. I like Canon for photos and longevity. I just wasn't sure about their practicality for B&W documents.

Jeff Smith 1 Loc: Pocono Mountains, PA

Yes, and frankly that's what I also do. However, this is for my daughter and she'd prefer not to have two printers. Granted, desk space can be a problem.

twillsol Loc: St. Louis, MO

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

Old Redeye Loc: San Mateo, CA

I use an HP Photosmart 6515 and love it. I don't think the ink cartridges are too expensive, when purchased at Costco. They last a long time.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

If you are really serious about the quality of your photos, get two printers... a pigment-based ink jet for the photos and a dye-based document printer for everything else.

The dye-based inkjet can be something cheap... and it might be good enough to do proofs or printed catalogs of your images, though they won't have much permanence. I'm using an old Epson R300 for this purpose. It is a "photo printer" that uses 6 inks for pretty good looking prints... however being dye-based they will fade rather quickly and have little archival value. I use it for documents, too. A full set of inks costs close to $100, but the black can be bought separately and lasts a relatively long time when used with plain paper. One problem is that because it's waterbased, any prints that get wet will run and smear. Of course, the inks never manage to empty out all at the same time and cost a little differently (the black tank is more expensive), but I probably get around 75 to 100 8.5x11 photo quality prints from an ink set... so have a cost of about $.10 or $.15 per for proofs of images and thumbnail catalogs. For simple documents, it's probably more like 200 plain paper, black & white pages... maybe more.... So my cost of ink likely runs about $.05 per page or less for documents.

I used to have a laser jet, B&W only, for large volume of documents... but that took up a lot of space and when it started having trouble feeding paper, I got rid of it.... but I can only recall ever changing the toner cartridge in it once, at a cost of about $75, and that was after thousands of pages. But now for high volume work, I just take one original to a local office supply store and have them print me however many copies I need.

That Epson R300 printer itself was only about $200... but that was many years ago. I've had to reset the infamous Epson "self destruct" program three or four times so far. What that is..... Epson builds (or used to build) a "timer" into at least some of their printers, that after so many hundreds or thousands of prints shuts the printer down and gives you a message that the printer is worn out, unrepairable and needs to be replaced. But that's utter BS... there are free applets online that allow you to hack in and reset it pretty easily. My old Epson doesn't always feed paper reliably now, may be worn out or just need a cleaning, but is still able to print well in spite of reaching this pre-determined, expiration point at least three times - and being reset by me each time.

For photos I use a wide format HP printer that's got 8 tanks of pigment based inks. It's rather pricey to buy ink... $35-40 per tank... But they are large. It will print around 80 13x19" prints per ink set, on average. That works out to roughly $4 per print (plus the cost of 13x19" paper), which really isn't bad for archival (200+ year) prints on high quality fine art paper. Plus, some of the ink tanks actually last much longer than that, depending upon how much black is in an image and the exact mix of colors. This printer also has user-replaceable ink heads... not cheap, but nowhere near as expensive as having them replaced by a service department. Some of the more recent HP photo quality, wide format, pigment-ink printers use 10 or more ink tanks. Much larger ones, too... though they are also considerably more expensive ($75 each).

I do not use the wide format, pigment-ink printer for documents. It's overkill for plain paper printing... and not fast nor efficient enough. Epson, Canon, HP and a few others make some excellent photo printers capable of making archival prints... but none of them make sense to also use for simple documents.

If you only have room and budget for one, get the document printer... use it for documents and perhaps for proofing of your images, but not for final prints. You might want a printer with at least 6 inks, if you plan to do photo proofs with it. But plan to send your "serious" photos out for higher quality printing by one of the labs online. You can get 8x10s printed for around $2.50 each, or maybe even less, at a bunch of places. Try to find a lab that provides you with a profile to be able to soft proof your images, for best color matching.

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

I'd recommend a cheap laser printer for the docs and send your prints off to costco or similar.

Jeff Smith 1 Loc: Pocono Mountains, PA

Good to know. Thanks. We'll look at that one.

Jeff Smith 1 Loc: Pocono Mountains, PA

Wow. Thanks for all your input. That's a pretty amazing story about the Epson. I wonder if other manufacturers have the same type of technology and, if so, there are similar apps to work around it. Very interesting! Anyway, lots to think about.

Jeff Smith 1 Loc: Pocono Mountains, PA

Thanks for your feedback. It's certainly another viable option that I know works for a lot of folks.

wolfman

Canon Pixma Pro 100 for photos and a cheap dot matrix for documents.

Bob