What if for example you print a lot Christmas pictures that use a lot of
red? There goes all your red and you have to replace the ink at around $30
compare to Epson or Canon at $11.
A good x-mas red uses much magenta and yellow and a pinch of cyan...
and green is cyan and yellow. Christmas is a great holiday because you
use up all your ink pretty evenly.
The C9363WN color hp cart I believe is 14ml by three fetching a price
of $35 which works out to be about $11.66 each color. Chances are by
the time one is low, another is almost equaly as low as it takes at
least two colors to form a decent primary color and your third best
case scenero might be left with 1/2 of a single color left.
I can't speak for the canons as i've not replaced ink in them alot but
the Epsons... you "can" replace the magenta but if you do it by their
methods, the offical replace cart method, it's going to spew ink from
all the cartrages... so if your magenta is low and it gets replaced
you've lost so much of everything else you might as well replace the
whole set.
IIRC the R200 uses 13ml color carts costing $12/each. I found
replacing all the ink at the same time wasted far less ink than one at
a time with a cleaning cycle that purged a few ml from each one. The
black for the r200 costs $18 IIRC and is about 1/2 the yield of the HP
IIRC.
I went into the epson thinking that it would reduce my long term costs.
It didn't happen. while it's true you might not get all the ink out
of an HP cart replacing the set costs $60ish with typicaly a very high
yield black, a tad more if you buy one that takes three carts. The
epson ran me about $78/refill with a lower yield black. Not a big deal
as you already have a canon for document printing.
The way I see it... it's a cointoss between HP which you have to throw
away surplus ink or the epson which will purge surplus ink.
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The r800 is a very nice printer... Those ultrachrome pigment inks are
rather lightfast and the results look great even on uncoated paper, so
long as you're willing to spend $14.25 each or $114 for an entire set
of ink.
There is also the r200/r300 which are more reasonable in price and work
better on glossy papers.
The canon ip6000 and i960 are also good choices for photo printers.
the i960 *was* onsale on tigerdirect for under $100 but alas they hiked
their price, the current ip6000 costs less from newegg.com. While I
prefer the epsons for color accuracy and consistancy on most media
types the Canons don't seem to waste as much ink and the cost is much
more reasonable. But if you want to be frugal and not spend extra for
light magenta/cyan the canon ip5000 is a *very* nice substitute. While
i'd vote for smooth skies, the ip5000 with the smaller drop size looks
very good.
