Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with inkjet

Looking for a printer without the problems of finicky ink.

blueberry — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:36:09 -0800

[MomFilter] Looking for a reasonably cheap, reliable printer (for printing text) for an iMac. Leaning towards laser as the experiences with inkjets have been that bouts of little use lead to still full, yet dry and thus worthless ink cartridges. Looking for a printer for my Mom's iMac. She is wanting to print up a bunch of stories she has written, so the printer will only be used for text.
(No need for color, an attached scanner, or anything else)

She's had two cheap inkjets in the past where they were cheap to buy, but then you got gouged on the ink cartridges. These printers would up being a bit like "disposables" or white elephants—either getting gummed up after a while, or she'd not print anything for a month or two by which time the ink would have dried up or otherwise stopped working.

Fellow MeFites, do you own or know of any reasonably cheap (both pre- and post-sale), reliable b/w laser printers that you can recommend out there? Also, am I correct in guessing that laser toner has a longer "shelf life"?

Or, if lasers are too spendy, do you own or can you otherwise recommend an über-reliable inkjet that, say, you can just buy black ink for, and you've never had gum up or dry up on you?

Thanks all!

Recommend a printer

BeaverTerror — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:20:21 -0800

Please recommend a colour printer that prints 11x17" sheets. My HP 9800 was stolen this week, so I'm in the market for another wide format printer. Please help me pick one and give reasons for why you recommend it. I'd like it to be below $500 Canadian. Thank you!

A blank, my lord.

paduasoy — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:22:12 -0800

My inkjet printer behaves as if it is printing, but produces nothing - I'd be grateful for advice. Canon SmartBase 360. It feeds paper through and the printhead moves as usual, but nothing prints - neither colour or black and white, text or graphics. The printer was ok until a few days ago.

I have tried - turning the printer on and off; turning the pc on and off; deleting and re-installing the printer; upgrading the driver; replacing the cartridges; cleaning the sections I can get to.

Is there anything else I can try? I was planning to get a new printer fairly soon anyway, but would like to resuscitate this one to get through a stack of cartridges. And if anyone can recommend a good laser printer that would also be useful. Thank you.

Tired of being dictated to by printers

arniec — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:41:29 -0800

Inkjet Printer filter: My wife and I both have HP All in One Inkjet devices, me the 3310, her the 7280. Ink is a PITA. I'm looking to upgrade anyway, what should I get? My 3310 scanner glass is dirty and almost impossible to clean, plus I need a document feeder. So I was going to get a 7280 like my wife's BUT...I believe honestly that HP is bending me over on ink. Sure, all inkjet ink is overpriced, but it seems that these are ALWAYS short on ink of one color or another. Worse, unlike old ink carts which you could run dry, these actually stop you from printing ANYTHING if the printer determines one is too low of ink. I can't even choose to print in black-only mode of one of the two shades of purple is out.

I love the HP for their photo-printing capabilities, the prints really do look like photo prints, but I think I'm being taken on this whole ink thing.

Is there any better product that can scan to OCR with document feeder, mac compatible, and NOT an ink terrorist?

Anyone still remember anything about the Epson Stylus 3000?

baylink — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:24:54 -0800

Print Filter(heh): I just bought a spandy-old Epson Stylus 3000 Big-A$$-Inkjet, and I have a couple questions about it that fairly persistent Googling failed to answer. It came with the network interface, but no booklet, and I don't know how to set it. I'm also going to want to set it up for Bulk/Continuous Ink, but Lyson appears to have stopped making a setup for that model. And finally, Epson used to have a bundled version of (I think) Birmy's Postscript 2 RIP called "StylusRIP", but I can't find any evidence that they still do, and I'm not clear whether they sold the software, or bundled it. Any graphically inclined typed got any pointers for me?

Help me choose a colour printer PII

MarvinJ — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 02:25:27 -0800

Help me choose another printer. I got the HP 2605 from this askme and am now looking for your help again. Very happy with the printer we got and the business is doing OK too, but one of the limitations is the way the card is fed means that you can only go to a certain weight and printing on both sides by repeat feeding is out too.

What recommendations do you have for a printer out there, laser or ink jet, that is as good as the HP2605 but will allow heavy paper , light card to be fed through?

Where can I find

sevenless — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:24:53 -0800

I'm looking for inkjet printer paper (or an online printer) that will produce highly saturated color prints but isn't too shiny. I've been getting prints of some of my photos by Mpix on Kodak Metallic paper. I use for the very highly saturated color it gives me. Now, I'd like to get similar color saturation on paper that isn't so shiny. I'd also like to try my own inkjet paper, but I'm open to another online printer (or a local place in Seattle.)

Bonus points for paper makers that also have profiles for Epson 3800 or 4800 printers.

Inkjet or laser printer for reliability with really minimal use?

puffmoike — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 06:47:20 -0800

Will an inkjet or laser printer be more reliable if the printer will be turned off for 99.9% of its life? My mum wants an all-in-one printer (including fax), but I can't imagine she'll use it very often. In fact I suspect that it won't get turned on more than once or twice a month, and then typically she'll only print out half-a-dozen pages.

Cost—both upfront and per print—isn't as much an issue for her as user-friendliness and reliability (especially as she'll likely only print a couple of hundred prints per year). But as she isn't going to need networking ability, etc, it's likely we'll plump for a pretty basic version of whichever technology we end up settling on.

I've searched the Hive, and read half-a-dozen threads on the relative merits of inkjet v laser, but not surprisingly such minimal usage isn't typically a consideration in the discussions of the competing technologies.

(And mono will be fine—it will be used to print documents, not photos)

Need printer selection advice, please

mdrk — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 05:08:01 -0800

I need advice on an affordable inject printer that can print on paper sizes longer than 11 or 14". I am a teacher, and each week, all of us 8th grade teachers spend hours printing selected vocabulary words on sentence strips (pieces of paper that are 4" tall and 24" wide). We do not have a printer in the building that will print on paper longer than 11". If I could find one, then I could type these up just once in Word (or even Photodraw) and print out a set for each teacher.

Right now, the only way that I have been able to do this is to cut the strips in half and create a .jpg image in Photodraw. This just isn't practical because of the time that it takes to create each image, the loss of printable area due to margins, and the sheer number of little paper strips that are being created.

Any suggestions about how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated.

Inkjet Printer Recommendations

NorthCoastCafe — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 05:34:15 -0800

I'm loking for a small, not too expensive inkjet printer for mostly black and white printing of documents. I don't do photos and only occasionally want color--for Mapquest printouts etc. Lowest cost ink cartridges preferred. Speed and resolution not a big consideration. Footprint (size) is important but I don't want a "portable" which seem expensive. Thanks for your recommendations

Inkjet or laser?

doctorpiorno — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:23:17 -0800

Should I buy a laser printer or an inkjet for my home office? Having recently set up shop as a freelance translator, I'm currently on the market for a decent printer. Budget and cost per page are an issue, so I had assumed I would have to go for a smallish B&W laser printer. However, I keep coming across good reviews of the latest office inkjets, and it seems like some models with individual ink cartridges are actually pretty competitive efficiency-wise.

Essentially, I need something for light office use (say 20 to 100 pages per day, mostly text and spreadsheets) that won't break the bank. A built-in scanner and/or Ethernet port would be brilliant. Colour would be quite useful, but pretty much all colour laser printers are way over my budget, and I'm hesitant to buy an inkjet if it's going to make my cost per page explode.

My question, as you can image, is threefold: is the cost per page gap between inkjets and lasers as wide as it used to be these days? Are the new inkjets really usable in a home office environment? And finally, do you have any recommendations of specific models in the 100€-to-200€ range?

Thanks in advance, Hive Mind!

Acrylic Alternative

ostranenie — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 19:40:09 -0800

Can I seal inkjet prints without polluting the air and killing my lungs/brain cells? Inkjet prints are great, but if I spill so much as a drop of water on them or touch them they run and quickly turn into garbage. Some of them even stick to the glass on the insides of frames over time. I can solve this problem by sealing them with a clear acrylic sealer (available at any art supply store) which works wonderfully. The only problem is that the spray stinks to high heaven and is dangerous to inhale, so I have to do it outside.

Is there anything that doesn't smell terrible and that I can brush on that will protect my prints as well as (or almost as well as) clear acrylic sealer?

Finicky feeder

j-dawg — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 10:02:11 -0800

Any tips on a home repair to restore my HP inkjet to its former paper feeding glory? I have an HP all-in-one 2210xi that has served me well for a couple of years. I'm trying to print out a bunch of greeting cards using Staples matte photo greeting card stock, which I've used before in this printer with great success. But this time, after a few initial successful prints, the rollers no longer successfully feed the cardstock from the paper tray, making the printer return an "out of paper" error. (I'm pretty sure the rubber rollers are the culprit, because when I take out the top sheet, it has rubber marks on the edge where the roller has attempted to pull the sheet.)

When I print using ordinary paper, the paper feeding process seems to work fine. Is there anything I can do to increase the friction of the rollers without damaging paper fed through the printer? Or is this just the first symptom in an inevitable breakdown of the paper feeding system and not worth bothering to fix?

Thanks!

How can I get decent color brochure printing for under $1000?

calhound — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:37:18 -0800

Inkjet isn't cutting it for my home office. I give out about 200 product info sheets a month, and inkjet just gives, well, that technicolor "inkjet look", though granted I am printing on laser printer paper rather than inkjet papers. How good are these new $400 color laser printers? Should I give them a serious look, or is my money better spent on inkjet paper? Back when I did this kind of shopping 8 years ago the only real option for any decent brochures was a Tektronix Phaser dye sublimation printer ($9000 at the time). I tried a $5000 Tektronix color laser printer, but I was not impressed at all by the color saturation, so I returned it, and passed on the Phaser. Ever since, I have been grudgingly using $200 inkjet printers ever since and sending the most critical stuff off for 4-color offset (the ol' $2000 for the first page and 10 cents for each additional one deal). My current inkjet is a 2-year old HP 6840 ($200 in 2004).

Now I see that color lasers are available for $400. Has the technology gotten any better in the last 8 years? How does the table tip regarding consumables? I'm so out of touch with what's changed. I just want to make decent looking color brochures without having to get expensive photo papers.

It's also occurred to me that if I could varnish the paper somehow, that would make a difference... it's astounding how quality improves when a print process goes from matte to glossy in any print medium. I don't know if it's remotely practical to varnish printouts at home, though.

Time to get chippy with my ink cartridges?

noahv — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 09:35:18 -0800

Have you replaced your inkjet print cartridges with a generic by physically moving the cartridge chip? This site gives instructions, but I can't tell if this will screw up my printer's ability to detect low ink levels or not. Does this work?

Inkjet refills: malarkey, or effective way?

O9scar — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:21:37 -0800

Inkjet refilling: am I worrying too much about quality? I'm researching ink refilling for our office's old inkjet printer - an HP CP1700. At roughly 35 per cartridge, I figure we can save some money.

There's no shortage of sites selling refills, but I wonder about quality - probably because I murdered an Epson home printer with off-brand ink a few years ago. So maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but is there a brand/maker I should get (or more importantly avoid)?

Think Ink

jtron — Tue, 16 May 2006 09:41:43 -0800

I need a reliable, cheap online source for printer ink. Where should I go? I was buying from InkDaddy these last couple years but their site's been down for a few days, and I'm out of Magenta. I have a Canon Pixma iP4200; where's the cheap ink at? No links to sketchy greymarket Brooklyn camera shops, please. Low price, reliability, and fast shipping are all pluses.

Inkjet cartridges online in Canada?

cgg — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 10:03:17 -0800

Any recommendations for where to purchase inkjet cartridges online? I'm preferably looking for somewhere in Canada, or will ship to Canada cheaply. I've never actually owned a inkjet before (I've only used lasers), so can someone also tell me if it's worth the savings to get a refilled or off-brand cartridge, or would I just be throwing my money away? I need ink for an ultra-cheap HP PSC 1315, and I'd rather not spend more than the printer cost in the first place.

Ink cartridge head cleaner fluid

NorthCoastCafe — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 13:27:48 -0800

I bought a refill kit to re-ink my printer ink cartridge and spilled the small bottle of fluid labeled "cartridge and print head wash.' I'd like to get more of this fluid without having to buy another whole kit. Any idea what this fluid is and/or what generic item might replace it?

Where can I find "modified" inkjet printers?

RylandDotNet — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 07:32:43 -0800

Scientists (and others) are using modified inkjet printers to print a wide range of really nifty things, such as working electronic circuits, 3D architectural models, and living tissue like organs and skin. My question is, do you have to modify one yourself, or are they for sale? Where would I get an inkjet printer that was capable of printing out a layer of resin or wax or whatever? The only one I can find is the kind that prints out edible birthday cake photos.

Printer for fine art on OSX

jpburns — Sat, 23 Oct 2004 14:13:35 -0800

What's the best color printer for "fine art" printing, using OSX? I might consider color laser, but a good inkjet would also be acceptable. [More Inside] Things I'm looking for:
1/ Good tonal quality, especially on plain paper.
2/ Fairly wide paper sizes, if possible.
3/ Reasonable price of consumables.
4/ Postscript a plus.

I especially appreciate suggestions on printers that you actually have experience with...

Thanks!

Does anyone have experience creating their own giclee prints, or recommendations for a printer?

annathea — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 09:38:27 -0800

I've been experimenting with various photographic processes for a few years now, and would like to begin selling prints of my work. Does anyone have experience creating their own giclee prints, or recommendations for a printer that they've worked with? (more inside, naturally) I used to work for Epson, and am pretty familiar with their line of inkjet printers and archival inks. When I first began getting into photography around April 2000, I bought an inexpensive photo printer. Creates great prints, but is not at all archival (meaning, prints will likely fade noticeably in a few years).

I've looked into having them printed for me, but I want to sell them for around $20 a piece, and most print shops charge more than that for print runs of less than 500, hence my wish to try it on my own. Can anyone share their experiences creating and/or selling prints of their work? I'm a bit at a loss.

(P.S. CafePress is not a reasonable option for me, as their base price for prints is already higher than the price I want to charge).