Are you SURE you want to buy an inkjet printer?Apr 16 '01 (Updated Sep 07 '01) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Don't buy an inkjet printer, laser printers are a much better deal.
Someone must be buying inkjet printers because if you go into any computer store or office supply store, you see all the inkjet printers on display. But the question is WHY are people buying these awful printers? There is no comparison between an inkjet printer and a laser printer Let’s compare all the ways that laser printers are better: (1) Print quality. Print quality is the most important aspect of a printer. And inkjet printers simply don’t look as good as laser printers. It’s not just about the dot per inch. The output from an entry level 600 dpi laser printer will look far better than from the fanciest inkjets. Spraying ink onto paper is a lousy way to get a sharp image. Laser printed output is darker, sharper, and crisper looking than inkjet printed output. (2) Waterproof. Laser printers are waterproof. With inkjet printed documents, the ink smears when you get it wet. (3) Speed. This is a big advantage for the laser printers. Even inexpensive laser printers do 8 pages per minute. And on a laser printer 8ppm is 8ppm. Inkjet printers often have misleading specs. They have several modes, and if you print in the highest quality mode, the paper crawls out of the printer slower than molasses. Watching an inkjet printer print is like watching paint dry. Except that when the paper finally does come out of the printer, the ink isn’t dry, it’s still wet! (4) Cost of consumables. Inkjet printers seem cheap. Some sell below $100. But it’s the cheapest inkjet printers that wind up costing 10 cents per page in ink cartidges, and even the bigger inkjets cost five cents a page (and if you are going to shell out for a higher priced inkjet, then you’re not saving any money of the laser printer). After printing ten thousand pages, at ten cents a page you’ve spent $1000 in consumables, and even at 5 cents a page you’ve spent $500 in consumables. Laser printers generally consume 2 cents per page worth of consumables. So after ten thousand pages you’ve spent far more on the cheap inkjet. You would have saved money by investing in the better printer to start with. Are you thinking that you are not going to print ten thousand pages? Think again. Laser printers last forever. Print three pages per day, after then years you’ve printed ten thousand pages. My last laser printer lasted me ten years before it broke. Unlike some computer products, laser printers are a mature technology and they aren’t changing much. You can expect many years of service from your purchase. So what’s the one advantage of the inkjet printer? (1) Prints in color. Big deal. Color printing isn’t all that useful. I just knocked out 40 pages from my laser printer today to print out my tax returns. Does the IRS want color tax returns? No. They want tax returns they can read and that won’t disappear on them if they accidentally spill coffee on it. And if you do start using your inkjet to print color, the costs start to soar! You can use up one dollar of ink to print out a color photograph. If you want to print out quality color photographs, you don’t need a printer at all. Check out web based photo printing services. For example, at www.dotphoto.com, for only 29 cents, they will print out a 4 x 6 inch photo on real photographic paper, and they use Fuji Crystal paper that is archival for 70 years. And that reminds me of another con of inkjet printers: (5) Ink fades. In just a few weeks, the color picture on which you wasted one dollar of ink to print out is starting to fade. The ONLY reason you would want to own an inkjet printer is if you already own a laser printer for regular everyday printing, and you want to print occasional documents that combine text output with color, and you don’t mind waiting a minute for the page to print out and you don’t mind the cost of the color ink. If you think you can’t afford a $300 laser printer but you can afford a $100 inkjet printer, I say that you are better off spending $200 less on the computer and using the money to buy the better printer. And I’ve already pointed out that in the long run, the laser printer costs less. Trust me, choose a real printer over a toy inkjet and you’ll be doing yourself a great favor. UPDATE: After writing the original opinion, I learned about the new Canon S800 inkjet printer. It sells for $300, but if you want to print photos at home, this is the printer to buy. Its newly reformulated ink won't fade for 25 years if you use Canon's own brand "Photo Paper Pro". And print quality is as good as a photograph. It's still not cheap to print out photos in this manner. You have to buy not only the ink cartridges, but Canon's expensive paper. This printer uses separate ink cartridges, so it costs a little less than the Epson printers that have all colors in a single cartridge. Using the S800 is cost competitive with getting photos printed on sliver halide paper, plus you have more control over the final output, and you get immediate results. At the moment, this is the only inkjet printer I would recommend, for those who have digital cameras and want to make prints at home. I might buy one myself. Of course, I will still be using my laser printer for all of my everyday printing. UPDATE 2: I take back what I said in the previous update about the Canon S800 printer. It has been revealed that all the inkjet printers, even the new ones from Canon and Epson that are supposed to be archival, still have weird color shifting problems. The original advice still stands. If you want to make a permanent print from a color photo, try a digital output service like dotphoto.com. I used them recently to make an 8 x 10 print and it came out looking very good, just like a photograph. It cost me $5 ($3 + $2postage per order), but that's a lot less than the cost of buying a high end inkjet printer. How many 8x10 prints can you really hang around your house anyway?  |
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