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iChamp · May 30, 2003, 02:49 AM

I plan to buy an inkjet printer soon...trouble is I don't know which brand to buy. Any rocommendations appreciated. Canon, HP, Espon...whose is the better brand?

G4ME · May 30, 2003, 03:07 AM

how much are you willing to spend 100 200 300 400?, what are you going to use it for, B&W and some color, some photos, a lot of photos?

i am a fan of Epson or Canon, i have had my 740 for 4 years now and still going strong. if i was going to get a new one i would personly get a Canon S9000, or somthing along those line, so i can get some really nice pics for my digi cam.

I can't stand HP, the paper loading and $$ for ink i think is a major draw back.

DigitalEl · May 30, 2003, 05:35 AM

If you're looking for just a basic all-around, general purpose printer, it's hard to beat Canon for ink replacment costs. The cost of Epson refills is quite a bit more.

zigzag · May 30, 2003, 11:58 AM

Everything I've read suggests that Canon is consistently making the best printers for the money, and with the lowest operating costs. Not that Epson or HP don't also make excellent printers - you should consider whether you're mostly going to use it for photos or text or both. For text, I really love my HPs double-sided printing feature (although a laser printer will give you the best text).

Examples:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/artic...,109123,00.asp

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,916063,00.asp

Nawoo · May 30, 2003, 12:42 PM

get the canon i850
ultimate value for money

tooki · May 30, 2003, 02:58 PM

I plan to get an i850 shortly.

Epson, which used to be my favorite, has definitely fallen behind. Their current printers haven't really advanced, quality-wise, for several years (the highly-touted 5760dpi mode takes 8 times [!] as long to print as the 2880dpi mode, with no appreciable improvement in print quality over 1440dpi!!).

Epson's inks have also been rising and rising in cost -- the cartridges have remained around $30/each, but they get smaller and smaller, and now have an embedded chip that tells the printer when the cartridge is empty (and people have cracked them open after it said they were empty, and found ink inside!!!).

HP's quality is not bad, but their speed on color is still kinda putzy, and the cartridges not as generous in size as Canon's.

Canon uses separate ink cartridges and print heads. (And if the print head gets clogged out of warranty, you just buy a full set of ink and Canon will give you a print head for free.) A full set of 4 cartridges is about $40, and lasts a long time.

Now to software... HP had been really slow with OS X software, especially for the all-in-one machines.

Epson's OS X drivers, while largely timely, lack features like borderless printing, which is offered on Windows and OS 9. (Some high-end Epsons have borderless printing on OS X, too.)

Canon's drivers are great on OS X, although they seem to be slightly more capable of corrupting Print Center than the other guys' (but that's what Print Center Repair is for, I guess!).

TiUser · May 30, 2003, 03:44 PM

I just got a Canon i950 from Amazon for $234.49 with free shipping. The drivers installed easily although I needed a little help with borderless printing through iPhoto (see my other post in this forum). I printed a few pictures with the sample Canon 4x6 papers. The results are amazing! You will be hard pressed to tell the difference between regular photos and the prints from this printer. It is much quieter and quicker than the Epson 740 that it is replacing. You can't go wrong with this printer or its i850 sibling.

OreoCookie · May 30, 2003, 07:27 PM

Another vote for Canon.

The ink is the cheapest on the market. HP is a major rip off (my parents have already spent more than 1,200 Euros in ink!) -- I have read once that 10 % of their turnover is from consumables!

I love my Canon S630: fast, reliable, excellent quality. Oh, and it was OS X ready when you really had to be careful which printer was X ready and which wasn't. I have printed far too many pages with it, had to repair it once (a paper jam destroyed a part of the printer).

MikeD · May 30, 2003, 07:30 PM

I love my HP deskjet 970 with the double sided feature. I also love my Canon Multipass F80. But I can only use the print/scan functions under Virtual PC (we needed the fax more). It would be nice if they had OSX drivers for that but what can you do?

mark9939 · May 30, 2003, 07:48 PM

HP has never let me down. but I have had two terrible Canon printers in the past. I will never buy from them again.

Producer · May 30, 2003, 09:11 PM

how about the larger format versions? Cannon just released the 9100 but supposedly it is not as good as the smaller format equivelent (950) anyone know when there will be a large format version of the 950? Has anyone used the 9000? Is there a big difference in quality to your eyes between the 9000 and the 950? Also I wonder how expensive it is going to be to make large prints on the 9000/9100 ... maybe I should just get the 950 and then go to kinkos (ick) or online ofr larger sizes....

Timo · May 30, 2003, 10:41 PM

take a look at the fora at digital photography review

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1003

and do a search for the models your interested in.

When I was looking two months ago I ended up with a Canon i950. It's fast.

Timo · May 30, 2003, 10:42 PM

Originally posted by Producer:
... maybe I should just get the 950 and then go to kinkos (ick) or online ofr larger sizes....

that's what I decided in the end...the price difference buys a lot of prints

I Bent My Wookiee · May 30, 2003, 11:00 PM

Epsons look great when they print right but they always clog and have lots of other problems.

I know HP's are good but the drivers are sucky.

People here seem to like Canon but I don't know about the software.

Lexmark is just junky.

MindFad · May 30, 2003, 11:15 PM

Hmm, I've had two Epsons, both of which were total poo, had terrible clogging problems, and both of the printing arms broke. I took great care of each one, too. First when I figured it was just my bad luck, but I had like it, so I got a slightly better model, which also crapped out on me, in the same fashion. Lame. I now have a free Lexmark from Apple that has recently crapped out on me as well. Lexmark are poo -- one of those "man, I need the cheapest, crappiest printer for only a few months' time" and then you give it away.

Your basic poo printer.

I'm going with a Canon next, for certain.

hempcamp · May 31, 2003, 12:16 AM

I'd sooner print by drawing my own blood and painting it on the sheets than purchase another Epson.

The Epson that came free with my iBook (from Apple) jammed consistantly, printed inconsistantly, drank ink cartridges like cheap beer, and just downright sucked. I put it in the trash chute in my apartment and cheered as I heard it crash all the way down to the dumpster 16 stories below!

I hate inkjet printers as it is, but none of the HPs I've owned (early model, 540c, photosmart 1215) have ever given me any trouble. Ink prices are riotous though.

Canon printers have the best output I've seen for the dollar, but I haven't had any other experience with them.

Good luck, and beware Epson! (Read my full review of it at amazon.com)

--Chris

iChamp · May 31, 2003, 12:25 AM

Thanks all for your invaluable tips and recommendations. I'll definitely check out the Canon i950 and i850. Look like Canon is what I'm looking for. Great prints, affordable ink cartridge replacements, and installation software that 's compatible with OS X.

drjoe · May 31, 2003, 02:18 AM

Originally posted by iChamp:
I plan to buy an inkjet printer soon...trouble is I don't know which brand to buy. Any rocommendations appreciated. Canon, HP, Espon...whose is the better brand?

Longevity certainly should count. I have a HP 660C circa 1995. I have it hanging on an Asante Print box and using the hpij drivers it soldiers on. I just use it for occasional printing [my main printer for text is a Laserwriter IIg] and intend to keep it untill it dies.

OldManMac · May 31, 2003, 11:01 AM

I recently bought an Epson Photo 960. It's a phenomenal photo printer!! I've owned three Epsons in the past four years, and I've never had any problems with them! I do a lot of printing, so I upgrade every year. I've owned HPs and Lexmarks also, and the HPs are good text printers, but can't touch the Epsons for photos. Lexmarks are good text printers as well, but they are noisy as the dickens.

tooki · May 31, 2003, 03:23 PM

As for longevity... how many of you still have old Apple StyleWriter printers at home? I had an old original StyleWriter, which refused to die, and I still own a Color StyleWriter Pro. The StyleWriter Pro is pushing 10 years old and still works. (Not that it gets heavy use any more... my mom uses ye olde Epson Stylus Color 800, which is a true workhorse... Epson before it became junky!)

Guess who built those old StyleWriters? Canon!*

tooki

*Except for the SW 4500 and 6500, which are simply Apple-labeled DeskWriters, back when HP (like everyone other than Epson) was leaving the Mac inkjet biz and the only way Apple could convince them to continue to be sold was to do it themselves.

tooki · May 31, 2003, 03:29 PM

Originally posted by KarlG:
I recently bought an Epson Photo 960. It's a phenomenal photo printer!! I've owned three Epsons in the past four years, and I've never had any problems with them! I do a lot of printing, so I upgrade every year. I've owned HPs and Lexmarks also, and the HPs are good text printers, but can't touch the Epsons for photos. Lexmarks are good text printers as well, but they are noisy as the dickens.

Well that explains why you don't have trouble with your Epsons... you replace them before they have time to die. They don't last much more than a year before starting to get cloggy and problematic. And of course that doesn't fix the lack of good OS X drivers, nor the voracious appetite for ink.

As for HP... sorry, but a DeskJet 5550 with the photo inks beats the best Epsons. And Canon's i950 trumps them all. (The DJ 5550 prints nice photos, but takes ages to do so.)

tooki