New printer

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dcprenti

I am looking to buy a new printer-scanner machine and have less than
£100 to spend on it.
I will be using it mainly for printing text in black and white and
photo copying in black and white. I would like to have the the
option to print in colour aswell, although not necesarilly at photo
quality.
The most important features I am looking for in the machine are (in
descending order)
1. Cheapness of print cartridges
2. Reliability

Any recomendations? Im leaning towards an Epson Stylus Cx3200. That
a good or bad idea? Thanks in advance for any help.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.
 
dcprenti said:
I am looking to buy a new printer-scanner machine and have less than
£100 to spend on it.
I will be using it mainly for printing text in black and white and
photo copying in black and white. I would like to have the the
option to print in colour aswell, although not necesarilly at photo
quality.
The most important features I am looking for in the machine are (in
descending order)
1. Cheapness of print cartridges
2. Reliability

Any recomendations? Im leaning towards an Epson Stylus Cx3200. That
a good or bad idea? Thanks in advance for any help.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware
troubleshooting newsgroups.
Click to expand...


You don't really know much about printers, now do you? You obviously don't
know the first rule of printers

/The price of the printer is inversely proportional to the price of the
cartridges./

You are looking at a unit with an RRP of around £60. How on earth are
cartridges for that going to be cheap?!

The colour is around £27, the black £23. IOW, for an extra £10 you could
purchase a whole new unit. The colour is also one tri-colour unit, which is
incredibly wasteful.
 
dcprenti said:
I am looking to buy a new printer-scanner machine and have less than
£100 to spend on it.
I will be using it mainly for printing text in black and white and
photo copying in black and white. I would like to have the the
option to print in colour aswell, although not necesarilly at photo
quality.
The most important features I am looking for in the machine are (in
descending order)
1. Cheapness of print cartridges
2. Reliability

Any recomendations? Im leaning towards an Epson Stylus Cx3200. That
a good or bad idea? Thanks in advance for any help.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware
Click to expand...
troubleshooting newsgroups.

That's quite a good choice. I had a CX3200 previously and was very happy
with it. You can get cheap third party cartridges from
www.choicestationery.com and it will give reasonable photo quality prints,
probably better than any other all-in-one in its price range.
 
Miss Perspicacia Tick

You say the CX3200 is an uneconomical machine and then go on to say i
could get a more econoical one for £10 more. Could you give me an
example of what said machine might be? The reason I thought about
buying the CX3200 was because I had heard epson has cheap cartridges,
obviously not though.

Any help apreciated

p.s. I dont know much about printers which is why I am asking these
basic questions.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.
 
As per usual, your posting (Miss Perspicacia Tick) is abrasive, if not
insulting, and contains incomplete or inaccurate information.

For the benefit of the original poster: the cost of running a printer is
dependent on how it is used. For instance, should you tend to rarely
use color, but only print a few black and white text or images a day or
so, you will find that each time you turn on the printer it will go
through a cleaning routine which will use up the black and colored inks.
Some people have found that although they may never use the color
inks, they still will run out due to this cleaning process which can use
1%-5% of the ink in the cartridge each time, and then the printer will
not print until that cartridge is replaced.

Further, having separate color cartridges (one for each color) will not
save you any money in this situation, because they will all run out of
ink together from cleaning cycles, and they will cumulatively probably
cost more to replace that way.

Further still, there is very little savings, if any, in having separate
color cartridges unless you tend to only use one color very heavily. In
most photographic images, the colors end up being used fairly evenly.

The saving from individual cartridges is very much overrated, because
each time a cartridge is replaced with a new one, ALL the cartridges go
through an installation purging cycle, which can use up to 20% of the
ink in the cartridges. If several of these are required as individual
cartridges run low or out of ink, you can see how quickly, at 20% per
cycle, any cartridge that was having low usage would still run out of
ink during the purging cycles. Having one cartridge with 3 or 5 ink
colors, means it will only have one installation purging occur for all
the colors at the same time (although if you have a separate black
cartridge and it runs out, it may force a second purging process on the
color cartridge, since modern Epson printer only have one cleaning
station and vacuum pump, rather than two.

Any "all in one" which you use rarely for color will end up costly to
own as the ink is used up during first use of day cleanings. There are a
number of work arounds, but that are a bit cludgy.

You might wish to consider buying an inexpensive laser printer for all
the black and white work, and an "all in one" mainly for color work.
That way you might be able to reduce the number of times it needs to be
turned on and go through the regular cleaning process they go through
each time they are turned on.

Canon printers/all in one units may be cheaper to run in a larger
viewpoint. One can refill the cartridges fairly easily, and they
produce good quality results. You might want to ask about how much
cleaning the canon models do on start up each day, and if you can refill
the cartridges yourself with bulk inks, which can save you money.
Epson make refilling more difficult to accomplish.

Art
 
I am not "Miss Tick" (nor would I ever wish to be)

However, if you can find a good source for 3rd party ink cartridges
which work with the printer in question, that could prove to be a large
saving over other brands. As I mentioned earlier, Canon tends to be
more economical with replacement consumables than true Epson OEM product.

Sometimes 3rd party Epson subsitutes have problems with the chip in the
cartridge being misread, and causing the printer to either complain
about it, or to not function at all. SO, you need to consider more
reputable providers to avoid extra problems.

Art
 
You don't really know much about printers, now do you? You obviously don't
know the first rule of printers
Click to expand...

Not a very helpfull reply is it?
/The price of the printer is inversely proportional to the price of the
cartridges./

You are looking at a unit with an RRP of around £60. How on earth are
cartridges for that going to be cheap?!
Click to expand...

They work out a lot cheaper than the single colour cartridges for the
CX6400, which is twice the RRP.
The colour is around £27, the black £23. IOW, for an extra £10 you could
purchase a whole new unit. The colour is also one tri-colour unit, which
is incredibly wasteful.
Click to expand...

Never heard of compatibles?

Must be hereditary!!
 
dcprenti said:
Miss Perspicacia Tick

You say the CX3200 is an uneconomical machine and then go on to say i
could get a more econoical one for £10 more. Could you give me an
example of what said machine might be? The reason I thought about
buying the CX3200 was because I had heard epson has cheap cartridges,
obviously not though.

Any help apreciated

p.s. I dont know much about printers which is why I am asking these
basic questions.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware
troubleshooting newsgroups.
Click to expand...


No I didn't. I said for £10 more than a set of cartridges, you could replace
the unit with another CX3200.
 
Cheers for the help. Much appreciated.

I can see that i am going to have to investigate this a bit more. My
student loan wont stretch to me getting an expensive to run printer.
Im looking into cannon models as we speak (helpful advice).

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.
 
Further still, there is very little savings, if any, in having separate
color cartridges unless you tend to only use one color very heavily. In
most photographic images, the colors end up being used fairly evenly.

The saving from individual cartridges is very much overrated, because
each time a cartridge is replaced with a new one, ALL the cartridges go
through an installation purging cycle, which can use up to 20% of the
ink in the cartridges. If several of these are required as individual
cartridges run low or out of ink, you can see how quickly, at 20% per
cycle, any cartridge that was having low usage would still run out of
ink during the purging cycles. Having one cartridge with 3 or 5 ink
colors, means it will only have one installation purging occur for all
the colors at the same time (although if you have a separate black
cartridge and it runs out, it may force a second purging process on the
color cartridge, since modern Epson printer only have one cleaning
station and vacuum pump, rather than two.
Click to expand...


Having used color inkjet printers since they first became available (a long
time ago) I find the above statements, to put it bluntly, full of crap!

If a color inkjet printer sees any use as a photo printer it will use some
colors twice as fast as others. (which ones get used most is directly
dependant on photo content)

I own and use regularly:

2 Canon i950 printers
2 Canon i960 printers
2 HP Photosmart printers (7000 series)
2 Epson PhotoStylus Printers (925 and 785 epx)

On the Epson and HP printers the ink indicators ALLWAYS show even ink usage,
because as soon as one color is used up, the entire cartridge is useless, but
the ink usage is NOT EVEN CLOSE to equall.

On the Canon printers the ink monitors only show 3 levels: FULL/LOW/EMPTY

These levels are aquired (on the i series) by an led peeking through a prism
in the bottom of the cart.

A simple daily eyeballing of the carts (they are clear plastic) will show
actuall ink levels, and I have YET to see all the colors run out at anywhere
near the same time.


In the use my Canons get (8x10 prints of people and horses, indoors and out)
the light magenta and light cyan seem to get used up fastest. About twice the
rate of the magenta and cyan.

If all five of the non-black inks were in the same cart, I would be throwing
away half a load of every color except the light ones with every cartridge
change.

The solution is to use printers that have seperate cart or re-fill. I do
both (though when I'm doing on-site work I use only Canon printers and only
Canon carts)
 
Miss Perspicacia Tick said:
No I didn't. I said for £10 more than a set of cartridges, you could replace
the unit with another CX3200.
--
Click to expand...
So if he buys a set of cartridges for a CX3200 for £8, (which is roughly
what I've been paying for a set for the last few years) you're saying he
could have a new CX3200 for £18?
 
Larry... I appreciate your rather hostile reply, because it gives me the
opportunity to correct the misunderstanding you read into my posting.

In spite of the fact that the postings I was replying to referred to the
"all in one" CX3200 (a CMYK printers) versus other printers using
tricolor and a black cartridge, I did fail to be specific enough (for
you, at least) to mention I was not referring to six, seven or eight
color printers, which I would predict you are (I believe all the
printers you list are indeed CcMmYK printers).

So, in my defense, I stand by my original statement that separate color
cartridges in FOUR COLOR CMYK printers tend to average out their color
usage and tend, especially in photo image use, to use up their inks
fairly evenly, and that they offer little to no savings over tricolor
cartridges for EPSON printers because of the way Epson purges all the
cartridges each time any one individual cartridge is replaced, and the
fact that the individual color cartridges are more costly per unit ink
measure. But I will, for you LARRY, make the following clarification.

One of the biggest rip-offs in inkjet technology was the introduction of
the CcMmYK printers, which added the light cyan and magenta colors. Not
only are these basically just watered down versions of the other colors,
costing the manufacturers even less to make (since the dyes and/or
pigments are usually the most costly part of the ink mixture), but the
drivers are so designed to use up the light cyan and magenta inks at
about DOUBLE the rate of the other colors (as you imply).

Although the result from these 6.7 or 8 color printers is somewhat
superior in photographic applications, the truth is as the dot size
decreases and variable dot technology has improved, the resultant color
fidelity has become considerably less of an issue, and for the average
inkjet user (the poster was looking to buy an all in one for under 100£
UK and he indicated he would not be using the color very often), the
difference between the result of a 4 color print and 6 or more color
print, is difficult to see.

Further still, with dye inks, the light cyan and magenta inks are much
more fugitive than the full dye load inks, because, in part, the dye
itself helps to protect the dye below it from fading. When the dyes are
highly dilute and therefore very light in color, they fade much more
rapidly that similar dots of full dye load.

Just as you quote your experience, I will quote mine. I own and use six
different Epson printers, all CMYK models, and have gone through quite a
few cartridges in the last nine years. They are mainly used for
photographic image production, and I would say my images are variable
and typical in subject matter. I actually remove the ink left over in
the cartridges prior to refilling them. My empirical tests based upon
first use Epson and other cartridges are that typically, the yellow runs
out first, followed by magenta and then cyan, unless I have been
printing an abundance cyan skies. However, although there is a pattern
to the inks running out, the amount of cyan and magenta ink left when
the yellow runs out, is on average only 5-15% of the cartridge capacity.

In fact, I tried an experiment at one point where I reinstalled the same
cartridge which had run out of yellow ink, and allowed it to go through
an initiation purge process, and the magenta ran out by the end of that
purge, and the cyan soon after, meaning very little ink was left in the
other two colors.

I cannot predict how other people's image subject matter may alter their
ink consumption, in terms of colors, but under average conditions, the
colors in a tri-color cartridge will tend to run out at nearly the same
time.

And, by the way, I too have been using color inkjet printers for a
rather long time, in fact, since Epson started making them. I still use
two 2nd generation printer (the Stylus Color Pro and Pro XL) which were
upgraded from the original Stylus Color.

Art
 
I tend to agree with you Art. My CX6400 uses the individual color cartridges
fairly evenly, also they are more expensive to replace than the Tri-color
cartridge that was in the CX3200. I often wonder if I made the right choice
when I upgraded from the CX3200 to CX6400.

Kaiser
 
Kaiser said:
I tend to agree with you Art. My CX6400 uses the individual color cartridges
fairly evenly, also they are more expensive to replace than the Tri-color
cartridge that was in the CX3200. I often wonder if I made the right choice
when I upgraded from the CX3200 to CX6400.

Kaiser
Click to expand...

The main advantage, if it is so for you, to the CX6400 versus the CX3200
is that it uses Durabrite inks, which are pigmented versus the CX3200's
dye based. What this affords you is longer lasting images, use of
certain other paper substrates, and a waterproof result even with plain
paper. Other than that, I'm not sure the advantages are that significant.

Art
 
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