Printer recommendation anyone ??

[trem1]

The time has come for me to think about replacing my aged epsom cx3600 printer which has served me well over the years but what to replace it with ?

What i want is a scanner/printer that is cheap to buy and is cheap for inks and because i'm getting more into photography can print directly onto cd's.dvd's

the only fault with the cx3600 is that it gets used so rarely that the inks seem to dry up, so every time i want to print something i have to put a new set (4) of ink in.

my thoughts of being able to print onto cd'd is so i can keep a hard copy of my photo's and also make funky picture disc's of the grandkid's etc.

anybody got any good recomendations then

[gumby6371]

I've got an Epson RX585 printer scanner with cd print and prints photos direct from the memory card. It will be obsolete now as it's a few years old but there will be an up to date version. Mine was about £70 if memory serves.
You can't beat the ink prices on Epson printers, a set of 6 compatibles for mine is about £15 from the computer shop down the road, cheaper still via t'interweb.

[steve_earwig]

It all seems to have changed now, they have chips inside the cartridges that tell the printer when they're empty and compatibles don't seem to have them so you get warnings up all the time and if the cartridge does actually run dry the printer head burns out That's what I read anyway, I recently had to get my sis-in-law here a new printer. Having had Epsons in the past that didn't like compatible inks and seemed to block the heads up if I didn't use them for a few days, I then got this here Canon which has been running on cheap compatibles (mainly from Lidl of all places) for about 7 years. So I thought I'd get her a Canon. Then I found out about these damn chips. It's a bluddy scam

I got her a Canon in the end, after comparing the prices of not just the printers but of the replacement cartridges too, plus how many pages they're meant to print. I was also expecting it to come with almost empty cartridges (another scam) but they were actually real ones.

[leestudd30]

A couple of years back I bought an HP F4500, mainly because it was a printer/scanner/copier but it also had wifi so I didn't have to use the usb cable. But I've always had problems with it printing wirelessly and it took about 30mins to install the bloody thing! The cartridge thing annoys me too. I bought some remanufactured ones but within a day of me installing them the printer kept saying it was empty due to the chip in them. I literally haven't printed anything at home for a year lol, and its over £20 for genuine HP black & colour ink too!

[Doggy]

I gave up printing at home for the same reason, plus the cartridges seem to dry up if unused for a fair while.

Last time I looked it was cheaper to buy a new printer/scanner/copier on special offer than a pair of cartridges. I concluded the world has indeed gone mad.

[scotty73]

A couple of years back I bought an HP F4500, mainly because it was a printer/scanner/copier but it also had wifi so I didn't have to use the usb cable. But I've always had problems with it printing wirelessly and it took about 30mins to install the bloody thing! The cartridge thing annoys me too. I bought some remanufactured ones but within a day of me installing them the printer kept saying it was empty due to the chip in them. I literally haven't printed anything at home for a year lol, and its over £20 for genuine HP black & colour ink too!

i got a hp c4580 that's wireless but runs on usb here... Tried to use it wireless it just fried my head.
The aftermarket cartridges do dry up if left i paid just under a tenner for a colour and an XL black they seem to want to run the alignment page every time i turn it on which pisses me right off tbh and on Sunday while my daughter was doing some printing the Eiffel tower was pink ffs.

It's a good 3 in 1 if you'll pay for hp ink, I've not tried them but the lad i bought it off in Tesco said they do a Tesco compatible ink which was cheaper and works a treat... His words mind so who knows.

[highlander]

Go on eBay and buy an old cheap HP Laserjet printer. Last one I bought was £40, and had an Ethernet port on it so you could print to it over the LAN (perfect for me).

I don't print a huge amount, but I replaced the toner cartridge once in the whole time I owned it, and that was a refill job at a local Cartridge World, can't remember how much it was but it wasn't as much as the printer was. The printer eventually died due to failed mechanical parts (the courier hadn't been very kind to it in transit) but for the money I spent on it, it saved a fortune in ink.

My experience of laser printing has been black and white only, and the only multifunction I ever had was a Lexmark where the first ink refill was almost twice the price of the printer (so I never refilled it!) but the cost of personal colour laser printers is much lower these days. You can buy a new HP LaserJet Pro 100 Colour multifunction (print/scan/copy) for about £250 inc. VAT; there'll be used ones on eBay for less.

Laser printing is great because the print quality is superb, the ink doesn't smudge, the jobs print quickly and quietly (important for cat owners; cats have been known to kick the sh*t out of inkjets), and the toner cartridges last AGES, giving you thousands of impressions per cartridge rather than just a few hundred (if you're lucky) with wet ink printers.

Inkjets are a false economy. Avoid.

[highlander]

Edit: double post, bloody forum decided to give me an error

[steve_earwig]

It's not just me then, I've been getting them for 3 days now Nothing about on Dream Host either

I read somewhere that the fumes coming off a laser printer are worse than sitting in a room full of smokers...

[trem1]

yea its the same for me, very slow loading, timing out, server 500 error that type of thing. pleased its not just me

[highlander]

I read somewhere that the fumes coming off a laser printer are worse than sitting in a room full of smokers...

Apparently this is only a serious issue if you are sitting next to a busy workgroup (read: feckin' massive) laser printers that are in use constantly, so that the working parts remain hot - the hotter the system, the more microparticles were released.

The problem is mitigated almost completely if the printer is kept in a well-ventilated area, so that these potentially harmful particles are widely dispersed or extracted/filtered completely. My living room isn't particularly well-ventilated but it's big enough for there to be a large volume of air (as opposed to a tiny little study / copy room) and the printer in question maybe printed a few times a week at the very most - not enough to keep the working parts hot. Also, it sat a good couple of metres away from my PC, so it's safe enough. If it was a concern, it was a network printer and so I could have stuck it in the hall beside the ADSL router (stupid location for the BT master socket).

[Welly]

(stupid location for the BT master socket).

My house is 9 years old and has the main socket at the bottom of the stairs, in the Hall Way do people really think we all still sit on the bottom stair with a hard-wired phone on our laps chatting away........I mean, I still happen to do that but they're not to know are they

I remember my Gran's house had a Telephone 'Table' - it was quite an event using the phone....getting seated first....looking up the number in the alphabetised directory and then the dialing began (the turny roundy clicky dial thing) I apologise to Wiggy for not knowing the correct name here

[steve_earwig]

I believe the technical word you're looking for there is "dial"

The wiring comes to the hallway just like the gas main comes to the meter, the rest is your problem

[Welly]

But then you get Mr got-79-installs-to-do-today BT engineer who runs an extension along the skirting/architraves which looks crap.

I at least had the forethought to get the electricians to first-fix a concealed BT supply to behind the TV and another in the Bedroom (forgot to tell them about the Kitchen )

[steve_earwig]

But then you get Mr got-79-installs-to-do-today BT engineer who runs an extension along the skirting/architraves which looks crap.

Probably because Work Manager (or whatever they call it now - a turd by any other name...) has allowed him 47 seconds to complete your install and it's telling him he then has 3 minutes to get to the other side of town for his next appointment...

I just remembered, I have a screen shot of (part of) my last night's work for BT. It's called "lest I forget":