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infowarrior · Apr 28, 2001, 07:20 AM

I've got an Epsion 5700i .... when it works, it works fine - but the 1.0 driver is a real pain under OS9....plus, Epson's real quiet about printers upport under X......when I was on the PC side I swore by HPs.....all I do is black-and-white printing.....any ideas on GOOD inkjet printers and/or decent lasers?

thx

Cipher13 · Apr 28, 2001, 09:14 AM

Well... probably to your dissatisfaction I'd have to recommend Epson... lol.
They've been nothing but good to me...
The drivers are awesome too. Epson Stylus Colour 740 is what I'm talking about - works fine under OSX too.
I hate HP...

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G4ME · Apr 29, 2001, 02:13 PM

Amen to epson I have had one 740 with my old 6116 cd with ADB and then got my new G4 and the thing is a lot faster with the USB, but now the ink is smudging a little under low quality, I think its the cheap ink that I picked up at staples , I do't mind, I love printing off cool desktops from. Macdesktops.com
too.

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I Have a Super Computer

davidflas · Apr 29, 2001, 09:46 PM

I haven't had much luck with epson printers myself, my stylus color 800 really sucked. I have been using an HP 935c and an HP 1220c/PS for a while now. Sharp black text and excellent photos on special paper. Despite what others have said, I recommend HP despite their microsoft-like business tactics.

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Jesus chills with a 40

exa · Apr 29, 2001, 10:13 PM

I'd have to second HP 900 series...
I've had an Epson stylus color 800 and boy did that thing give me problems... finally broke down... many mechanical problems, ink head problems and such.

IMO, the HP 900 series are simply much better built than comparable epson printers, they are very reliable, I haven't had ONE problem YET (no paper jam, no ink problems, no NOTHING, and I've had it for a year now) with my HP 950c. The epson on the other hand did give me many problems... The HP imo is just better designed, although the color picture quality is slightly below the epson's. Hoever, the HP's text quality creams the Epson's, and it is a much faster printer. Also each time you replace the HP ink tank, you replace the ink head... on the epson, you have 1 ink head forever, and once it dies, it dies...

[This message has been edited by exa (edited 04-29-2001).]

May 2, 2001, 05:52 PM

I use an Epson 1270 (inkjet) for printing photographs and design layouts. It has superb reproduction quality and combined with a good scanner is an equal match to traditionaly printed photos. I also own a new HP Laserjet 1200SE (b/w laser) which I use for general text and PDF documents for business and design layouts. The Epson is great for doing photography but if you are just using a printer for text based business applications go with the HP. The HP just came out about a month or so ago and offers USB/Parallel, Postscript Level 2, PCL 5 & 6, and can print on paper stock as thick as 46lb. The Epson can get Postscript support through an additional Postscript RIP software which will cost a little extra. Hopefully this will help. I'm not sure what your end use will be so do a little research.

P.S. Epson has a new version of the same printer I have which will do bleeds and has a higher resoluion (Stylus 1280). They also make the same printers in non-tabloid size that has the same print quality. HP makes another version of the same printer which has a scanner/copier feature (1220) or you can buy the 1200 and add that feature on at a later date. Make sure you use cnet.com to do price searches.

Epson 1270/1280 $400-$500
HP Laserjet 1200 $400
HP Laserjet 1220 $530

zigzag · May 2, 2001, 08:19 PM

My HP 970 has been completely reliable. I especially like the automatic two-side printing feature - saves a lot of time and paper. If you're going to do mostly text printing, I would recommend HP. Great color prints as well. The magazine reviews seem to agree.

I haven't used an Epson in a long time so I can't say pro or con.