Re: Inkjets: have they improved?

Ian McCall wrote:
On 2007-12-03 10:04:20 +0000, Chris <ithinkiam@xxxxxxxxx> said:

Ian McCall wrote:
'Reliable' is why, in around 2000, I left inkjets in the first place
and paid the then-ridiculous premium for a colour laser. I found that
inkjets quickly gunked up and started producing poor quality text
through misalignment. So...

Was/is it not an Epson problem? My old HP inkjet never game me such
problems.

Seven years ago so I can't quite remember - might have been Epson,
might have been Canon.


Ah, the Epsons seem to have a design fault (even now) that the print
head is part of the printer not the cartridge (like HP, Canon et al) and
thus is prone to getting blocked if not used regularly. Even when they
are used regularly they often waste a lot of ink in cleaning the heads
according to some labs in PC Pro. This is one reason why I've kept away
from Epsons despite their quality.

I've just bought a multifunction HP C5180...

Interesting, as this was a model I'd been considering.

Yes, that's the thing. I already have a separate scanner which is ok,
but I have no real means of printing photos even though the laser is
colour. Lasers are best at spot colour - business-type documents, and
this made perfect sense for me when I bought as I was running my own
business. Now however I'm employed, so less paperwork to deal with and
maybe printing photos might be a higher priority.

Decisions, decisions.


Here's a quick review if you're interested.

The main reason I bought the thing was to gain the functionality of a
scanner and as my old printer was getting a bit old (and not very good
for photos) I decided to treat myself to a proper photo printer with
scanner built-in, thereby saving on sockets/cables. The ethernet
functionality was an added requirement to allow printing from my MBP
without having to switch on the PC the printer sits next to.

Installation on the Mac was a breeze except the only option you get is
to install everything, which results in 18 (yes, eighteen!) new apps
appearing in the Applications folder. All I wanted was the printer
driver! There's no Leopard install disc AFAICT either.

Printer quality is excellent for photos and documents is v. good on
cheepo A4 paper at high quality - I need to play around a bit with the
settings to optimise quality versus speed as currently it's too slow.

Paper handling is a bit fiddly with the photo paper carrier sitting
above the A4, but my setup is a bit contorted being sideways on
underneath my desk.

I've not really used the scanner yet, but the couple of test scans I've
done suit my occasional needs of document, old (low quality) photo
archiving, etc.

A few things of note are:
- it's noisy (esp. when you first switch it on)
- it's a good bit bigger than a std inkjet
- it won't sit flush against a wall as the power cable protrudes quite a
lot from the back of the printer

A tip if you do print a lot of photos is to buy the value pack of 6 ink
refills plus 150 6x4 photo paper for ~£20 which works out quite cheap.
HTH
.

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