On 8/20/2012 1:07 PM, J.G. wrote:

>> 4. Try to explain to your family that they should only select the color
>> printer for things that absolutely need to be printed in color.
>
> Good advice!

I was thinking of setting something up where it was necessary to use a
password to print to the color printer. I could have put it on a
separate network with a network key that only I knew. But as my kids got
older they were able to grasp the reasons I wanted to minimize ink usage.

>> 5. Show your family how to send photos to Walgreen's, CVS, or Costco for
>> printing.
>
> Makes the most sense of all!
> Now to convince them of that!

For photos, the quality and longevity of commercially printed photos
versus inkjet should be sufficient.

Personally, we have greatly reduced our ink usage. Before we had
networked printers there were printers in the kids rooms. This was a bad
idea. Now they have to come downstairs to get their printouts.

Just bought a laser printer for the daughter-unit to take to college
next month, and of course it has refillable toner cartridges.

On 8/20/2012 3:22 PM, J.G. wrote:

> Why is finding a decent printer to print photos at home at a decent
> price such a miserable process?

Around here it costs 9-15¢ to have a 4x6 photo printed on a Noritsu
commercial photo printer. If I send it to Walgreen's or CVS then usually
by the time I walk there, in ten minutes, the photo is ready. For large
prints Costco is the best deal.

By the time you buy photo paper and ink or toner it would be unlikely
for it to cost less to do it yourself, and of course the results would
not be nearly as good.

So I think the reason why it's so hard is that a decent photo printer
isn't cheap to manufacture or maintain and the wide availability of
photo printing service have eliminated the demand.

On 8/20/2012 7:12 PM, SMS wrote:
> On 8/20/2012 3:22 PM, J.G. wrote:
>
>> Why is finding a decent printer to print photos at home at a decent
>> price such a miserable process?
>
> Around here it costs 9-15¢ to have a 4x6 photo printed on a Noritsu
> commercial photo printer. If I send it to Walgreen's or CVS then usually
> by the time I walk there, in ten minutes, the photo is ready. For large
> prints Costco is the best deal.
>
> By the time you buy photo paper and ink or toner it would be unlikely
> for it to cost less to do it yourself, and of course the results would
> not be nearly as good.

I use Costco for all prints. I think there quality is usually very good
= excellent, provided I use the ICC profile for the machine I am using.
I also did a cost analysis and it is slightly less expensive to do my
own printing, provided I don't factor in the mistakes. Once I factor
those in, Costco is much less expensive.


--
Peter

"J.G." <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

> On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:56:16 +0900, Gernot Hassenpflug wrote:
>
> > The chipped inks (you canot get unchipped one anymore as far as I know)
> > require a chip clearer (USB-attached to my PC) to reset the counter on
> > the cartridge, or else the printer will register it as empty.
>
> Are you saying that the Canon inks that you buy are now chipped?
>
> If so, that's a pain.

Yes, they are all chipped. The last unchipped ones I think were the
"3" series (OK, I know the names are different in the rest of the
world), used on the MP710/MP740 (similar to the MP700/730, so pretty
old). These were replaced by the chipped "6" series and later types.
--
Gernot Hassenpflug

On Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:56:33 +0900, Gernot Hassenpflug wrote:

> Yes, they are all chipped.

If that's the case, and since I have all too much (bad) experience with
the HP d-series chipped ink tanks, maybe an ink printer isn't in the
future for me, as I'm sick and tired of their silly games.

"J.G." <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

> On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:08:43 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:
>
> > Yeah, when I was working I went thru several color laser printers with
> > the idea they would be able to do color photos better then the
> > "expensive" inkjet process.
>
> I'm slowly coming to the following hard-won realization,
> much to my chagrin, regarding printing color photos at home:
>
> 0. B&W laser writers (such as my HP 3200m) are trivial & cheap to refill
> 1. Most color laser writers are also trivial & cheap to refill.
> 2. However, color laser writers stink at printing pictures at home!
>
> Given that, we are FORCED to look at ink-based printers:
> 0. IMHO, all ink-based printers from HP are to be avoided at all costs!
> 1. Kodak/Canon/Dell ink-based printers 'may' be a viable alternative.
> 2. The key is to buy the printer based on the ease of "replacing" the ink!
>
> Drat! Color lasers, which are the subject of this task, are slowly
> dropping off the radar screen ... and the dreaded ink-based printers
> are rising up, again.
>
> Why is finding a decent printer to print photos at home at a decent
> price such a miserable process?

Why is Epson not recommended in the US (I assume most posters here are
in the US)? Epson is great for photos, although as I concentrate on
linux Canon driver development I only use Epson as a backup. I buy 3rd
party inks for my Epson, haven't tried refilling it. I'm not aware of
any problems with the ink cartridges, but maybe there are, which is
why Epson is not being discussed here?
--
Gernot Hassenpflug

On Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:11:45 +0100, Brian wrote:

> The strategy is used by virtually ALL the inkjet makers, not just HP -
> they sell the printers cheaply, sometimes at a loss, and then make their
> money on the replacement cartridges.

If that's the case (which it very well may be) ... then it's confusing to
me why I can quite easily replace the 250 grams of black toner in my
HPC092a (aka 92A) toner cartridge for my HP 3200m AIO printer.

Q: Why make ink so difficult to refill ... but not toner?

On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 23:14:41 -0700, Savageduck wrote:

> I think the issue the OP has, is a particular one with HP and color
> laser printers and the manner in which HP chips its toner cartridges. I
> believe he wants a color laser printer which will give him adequate
> results for photographs, as he rightly feels that the cost of inks for
> photo quality ink jet printers is excessive. The bottom line is, there
> is no free, or low budget ride, when it comes to producing quality photo
> prints at home, or anywhere else for that matter.

Wow. Nice synopsys!

In my naive days, I bought multiple HP ink printers from Costco, such as
the HP d135, which, due to the extreme expense of replacement ink tanks,
I naturally got very good at refilling. However, as noted, it should
NEVER be as difficult as HP purposefully makes it to simply refill an ink
tank - so - over the years, this frustration soured me on any and all HP
inkjets, swearing them off forever - and feeling good about that decision.

Still needing a printer, I immediately matured when I bought for about
$600 in those days, an HP laserjet 3200m, soon coming to the realization
that there 'was' a better way, which was B&W laser printing. Refilling
the C4092A is basically uneventfully trivial.

The kids/wife wanting a color printer notwithstanding, it 'appears' that
a color laser printer is not going to be acceptable for family photos;
hence I'm back to the only choice feasible - which is ink printers -
which I've previously sworn off forever (at least HP ink printers).

Finding out that almost all manufacturers make ink refilling difficult,
it appears that I'll have to choose my printer in reverse. That is, find
one that allows refilling - and then buy THAT printer.

This appears to be the only feasible method, although this entire process
of realization makes me want to kiss my trusty B&W printer in retrospect.

On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 22:22:09 +0000 (UTC), "J.G."
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:08:43 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:
>
>> Yeah, when I was working I went thru several color laser printers with
>> the idea they would be able to do color photos better then the
>> "expensive" inkjet process.
>
>I'm slowly coming to the following hard-won realization,
>much to my chagrin, regarding printing color photos at home:
>
>0. B&W laser writers (such as my HP 3200m) are trivial & cheap to refill
>1. Most color laser writers are also trivial & cheap to refill.
>2. However, color laser writers stink at printing pictures at home!
>
>Given that, we are FORCED to look at ink-based printers:
>0. IMHO, all ink-based printers from HP are to be avoided at all costs!
>1. Kodak/Canon/Dell ink-based printers 'may' be a viable alternative.
>2. The key is to buy the printer based on the ease of "replacing" the ink!
>
>Drat! Color lasers, which are the subject of this task, are slowly
>dropping off the radar screen ... and the dreaded ink-based printers
>are rising up, again.
>
>Why is finding a decent printer to print photos at home at a decent
>price such a miserable process?

Last time I needed to buy a new AIO Inkie I was going to avoid HP. I
read all the reviews I could find, compared features and user
satisfaction, plus looked at reported problems. I Finally settled on
a Canon that sounded REALLY good from the reviews. After getting it I
was VERY disappointed in it's print quality for text and photos, it
just did not match the quality on simple run of the mill daily
printing that I was used to from my old defunct (my fault) HP. Some
users had mentioned it's lengthy startup time for the first page but
it didn't sound too bad so I still bought it. Start up time turned
out to be a HUGE pain in the butt. If it sat for more then a few
minutes it seemingly parked it's print heads and then when you went to
print again there was all sorts of start up racket and delay while it
brought the heads out of cold storage. Then I discovered that in what
it considered normal mixed color and b/w printing it used a mix of all
the color inks to produce the "black" which came out more like a dark
charcoal. So its prints looked lousy and used up all the color ink!!
I took it back and returned to an HP AIO. Good luck with your
search!!

On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 22:25:41 +0000 (UTC), "J.G."
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>On Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:11:47 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:
>
>> Another thing to consider with lasers is startup time.
>
>I print maybe one page every two or three days, on average.
>
>I generally leave the printer on all the time.
>
>However, I 'could' just as well turn it off, for all it has
>been used.
>
>But, when I had the HP d135 AIO printer, I remember admonishments
>to keep it running all the time - otherwise it wasted ink (I was
>told).
>
>And, we all know, HP ink costs more than it's weight in gold.
>
>So, what's the general consensus for leaving printers on
>which are only used sporadically a few days of the week?
>
>Does that play a role in our printer selection decision?

Most lasers will have a power save that turns off the fuser heat which
is similar to turning them off. You definitely don't want to have one
that keeps the fuser hot all the time if you only print once or twice
a day and never turn the printer off. Of course, when the fuser is
turned off that means a delay in printing when you do want to print.
If it's only once a day it's probably not much of an issue.

I don't recall HP saying their printers should be left on all the
time, only that they should be turned off properly, which means with
their power button, not just by turning off the power strip it's
plugged into. If the printer is turned off in mid print by cutting
power from the power strip it will leave the print heads un-parked
which could lead to ink drying in them and causing clogging. In my
experience, no matter what you do there will be periodic episodes when
the HP goes into "clean and polish" mode where it exercises the print
heads by squirting some ink thru them into a build in disposal
reservoir.