Inkjetanic – Ship of DreamsMay 06 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line An inkjet is very useful for you family or SOHO, but you need a good one. This guide will help you to choose one that's you'll love.
Inkjetanic – Ship of Dreams (Note, this guide is LONG, so please be patient) So, what made you decide that you’re gonna buy an inkjet printer? Their cheap price? Color ability? Small and cute looks? That “every body else’s doing it” attitude? All of the above? Who ever invented Inkjet, he’s a smart dude. Here’s why. Long time ago, 10 yr. or so in our world, the stone age in computer’s world, there were two gods in printer mythology, Laser and Dot-matrix. Laser controlled companies, schools, government institutions spitting out pages at the speed of sound. Few home owners could afford them, nor did many people need a 65,000 page / month duty cycle. Dot-matrix sucked in print quality, but their paper handling abilities and impact method allowed them to print forms, which was what libraries and warehouses needed. The world of these gods were trapped in black and white magic. As you can see, neither of them are really useful for the home average home user. When inkjets was invented, especially color ones, they went straight to the home market. Why, because a good quality inkjet will allow you to do most of the printing needs around the house, in color, at a low initial cost – your children’s school projects, or your own; 8X10 photos; text such as memos, reports, or regular homework; printing web pages; and anything else that you want a hardcopy – greeting cards, bookmarks, t-shirts, etc. The touch of color they can give to your work will always grab more attention. Note that I said a GOOD quality inkjet, the $50 Lexmark Z12 or HP 648c that came with your computer is pretty much useless for anything more than a few sheets per week, and your ink costs will be astronomical if you don’t refill them. If you’re thinking about buying your first inkjet or upgrade your existing one, or as an addition to your laser, follow these basic steps and you’ll be able to choose one that fits you and will last: When choosing any printer, first determine your needs. Will you be printing more than 20 sheets per day? Will color be more important that black and white? What kind of quality to you need? What type of media will you be printing on? If you don’t need color, then skip this guide and grab a personal laser. I recommend Brother HL-1030 and Samsung ML-4600 for light printing and Brother HL-1250 for heavier printing. Set a rough budget range. Usually the more $ the better printer, but not always. Stay away from the sub $100 printers, they will not save you much money and you’ll be sitting beside it pulling out your hair a lot. The models from $100 to $250 is the best choice for 90% of home users. In this range, quality, features and affordability is balanced out. They give you quick printing speeds and very satisfying quality, and will also cost less in the long run, although refilling will equal everything out(more on that later). Printers that cost more than this usually give you even quicker speeds and higher quality, and features like tabloid (11X17 inch) paper ability, higher duty cycle, and advanced cartridge systems. Stay away from them unless you are a professional, but then, if you are you won’t be reading this stuff. After that you should go to a computer store that carries a fair number of models, ranging from a variety of brands, and hopefully make some print outs. The specifications on the box only tell part of the story, real life performance will vary a lot. If this if inconvenient, then I strongly suggest that you take a look at some reviews done by some computing magazines. You can do this on-line by going to you favorite search engine and type in “printer reviews”. Some know sites are CNET’s “computers.com”, “zdnet.com”(click on reviews, printers). When looking at the models, keep these thing in mind(bring a notebook): 1. DPI: dots per inch. This is the maximum quality the printer’s print-head can achieve. Generally the higher the better but some can be misleading. Some printers will give a higher horizontal resolution than vertical by half-stepping their motors – ie. 1200X600, 2400X1200, 2880X720. You should look at the smaller number. (Note, most printers can only achieve max res. in color on photo paper) 2. PPM: the speed. This is often very misleading in inkjets, so use it as a very rough comparison - if one is rated at 15ppm, it has to be somewhat faster than 3ppm, not necessarily 5 times. Again, read some reviews on the web to find out their true speed. Some printers shine at printing at normal speed(Epson 980), some at draft(Lexmark Z52), some at best quality(HP 952C). (manufactures use 5% coverage, draft mode, and the same document printed many times, and excluding processing) 3. Monthly duty cycle, in pages per month, is also very important. It tells you the amount of work the printer is intended to do in a month. Most inkjets will be around 1,000(HP 600series, Canon 2100, etc.) – 12,000(HP 2250, 2500 etc.) Lasers can be anywhere from 2,500 up to 200,000. If you are going to print 1000 pages in a month, it’s a good idea to get at least a 2000 page/month model. Printing anywhere near the limit is not good for the printer, give a comfortable margin. Going over the limit might not make the printer blow up, just like looking at a laser pointer will not necessarily blind you the first time. 4. The cartridge system. Most printers above $70 or so will have both the black and color cartridges installed at the same time, so you don’t have to switch around to print in color or black &white. Epson is the only company that has a permanent print-head installed in the printer and cartridges with only ink. These cartridges cost less and may be cheaper in the long run, but the danger is if the print-heads get damaged, you’ll have to replace the whole printer. Other companies use cartridges with print-head on them, they cost more but if they break you just pop in a new cartridge, and every cartridge change gives you a fresh head. As of this writing, Canon and Xerox are the only companies to offer what Canon calls THINK TANK. Every color(black, cyan, magenta and yellow) is a separate ink tank, housed inside one or two replaceable print-head units. They are suppose to cut down cost by eliminating waste, (ie, if yellow runs out, you don’t have to replace magenta or cyan). Unlike Epson, if the print-head get damaged, you can replace them. Take a look around the store and write down the ink costs and the number of pages they can print, for ink jets, the cost of ink will soon be greater than the printer itself. 5. Paper handling system, connectivity and control panel buttons. These do not matter as much as the other features, but is always nice to know. HP is currently the only company with a U-shaped paper route(paper on the bottom, goes into the printer and up, back out), all others give you a semi-straight route, with the paper behind the printer, on top at a 45 degree angle. Some users say that HP’s design is more reliable, some don’t say so. The paper on top handling system allows you to print on heavy weight(thick) paper because the paper does not have to curve as much. Nearly all printers have a USB port now days, as well as parallel port, so that if your computer is old, you can still use it. Most do not include any cables with the printer. Some printers have buttons on the printer for canceling, resuming or ejecting print jobs, some only have a power button, it’s always nice to have more. 6. Last of all, read the requirements so that your printer will work when you get home. After the trip to the store, you can come back here to epinions and check out what real life users say about the printer. This will give you some long term results of how the printer performs. Told you to write down the models and their features at the store. By now you shouldn’t have more than 5 models to choose from, if you do, then narrow down your choices. Think about each model carefully – does it have the quality, speed and durability I require? Is the price within my budget? What will be the long term cost? On what type of media is the printer good at? If you are using the printer for a single purpose, such as photo printing, then a sub-par plain paper text quality won’t hurt you much. If you are going to print letters to your boss the whole time, or doing reports, then you want the best quality text on normal paper. Printing on normal paper will save you a lot over high resolution inkjet papers that cost as much as $20 for 100 sheets. Another consideration is what’s the max paper size you’ll need? Any printer that prints letter size will print legal, but some have tabloid(11X17) capabilities, and professional wide formats go up to 60 inches wide or more, but that’s another story. If you print many pages a month, then your ink costs will far out-grow the initial investment of the printer itself. Consider this – reviews show that a $1000 HP 2250 professional business inkjet, after printing 5000 pages per month will be cheaper than a Lexmark Z32 costing $70. And the $249 Epson ($200 after rebate) with 7 cents per page will cost a third as the Z32 at the end of their life cycle, as I said before, the print-head-less Epsons will cost very little in the long run. There doesn’t seem to be a good cure for the high prices of ink cartridges, because after all, that’s how companies make their money, on inks. But this is. Companies hate this and do all they can to scare you away. This is also becoming a multi billion dollar industry. And can push your costs lower than a network laser, just a little bit higher than offset printing presses(okay, maybe a lot higher). This can be fun once you know how to do it. And maybe enjoy it. Like a hobby. Like....... Okay, enough gibberish. Ladies and gentlemen, let me..... Okay, I’ll shut up. In case you’re still awake, the method to eliminate high ink costs is by refilling. You probably have seen refill kits at you local computer store, and maybe you’ve even done refilling before. Since I’m writing this guide for everyone, I’ll just cover the whole topic again. You can buy the kits at stores if you like, they’ll save you a million over cartridges, but the real cost saving kicks in when you buy them in bulk, in Gallons. If you read some local computer magazines like the Computer Paper here in Canada(no, we don’t live in igloos), you’ll find some specialized ink stores that will sell you ink from drops to buckets. I’ve seen prices as low as $21US for a quart of ink! If you can’t find any, search for them on the net, just search for “inkjet refill” and Google.com will turn out a thousand pages, some at very low prices. A site that I recommend is http://www.global-inks.com. They sell quality inks at good prices, you’ll catch some real time lows if you wait for sales. Some people noted that the new HP cartridges have a limited life span and refilling is not a good idea, but most people don’t seem to have any problems. But I do know that once you refill the ink on HP cartridges, the ink level will not work correctly. The HP printers will remember up to 3 cartridges, so when you refill it, the printer will still read the previous ink level from memory. If you buy more than 3 HP cartridges at a time, then the printer will forget. The kits will give you instructions, if not, search for “inkjet refilling instructions” on Google.com and you’ll soon find a site with your printer and cartridge. Okay, after 5 hours of reading, you’re now officially licensed to buy a printer(haha, very funny). Anyways, I don’t want to spend another hour typing, saying good bye to you and enjoy your new printer when you get home, so I’ll end it sharp and clear. Here’s some models that I recommend, as of May 5, 2001. If you are reading this May 5, 3001, and your alien friend brought you this wonderful printer that prints faster than Milky-Way can spin(20km/second), at 5 trillion dpi, and 8 thousand bit color depth, then go with it. Other wise: Canon S600. Super fast, very good quality on plain paper in draft mode(heck, even draft mode in color is 1200dpi), better than my 1996 Canon BJC-4000 can in highest quality mode, seriously. Photo quality is pleasing, without direct comparison, it looks exactly like a real 8X10 photo if you print on photo paper, and it takes only 1 and a half minutes. Most printers as of this writing will take about 10 minutes. Epson Stylus Color 980. A real workhorse, the fastest in normal quality and 6.7 ppm(true speed, according to PC Magazine). Equipped with 5000 page per month duty cycle, it’s a real work horse. Not as fast as the Canon in Photo printing at 3 minutes but faster than 99.99999999999% of printers out there(okay, my math sucks). HP 952C. Why? go look yourself.  |
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