If you're pleased with canon, go canon. Unfortunately you are
correct, the ip6700D has been abandoned, and the solution solution you
can likely get is the mp970, which offers 7 tanks, same compliment as
the ip6700D, but with an extra pigmented black. But I would guess
that will run you about £180 at PC world.
I would pick the ip4500 over the ip4600 due to the cost of ink being
LOWER per page for the ip4500, and the ip4600 has decreased the size
of it's text printing head. If you can't find an ip4500 you can find
a multi-function
http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/store/dix_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0....
£95.04
Here is a reviewhttp://
www.steves-digicams.com/2007_reviews/canon_mp610.html
I can only speak directly about the mp830, and ip5200, which are
slightly older models than the ip4500. Photo printing is pretty damn
good on them, but the ip6700D had an advantage over them in the fact
that it had small drops for yellow and black. You tend to see large
blocky areas on swellable polymer paper on the ip5200 and mp830 where
it uses yellow and black. Cyan and magenta have a choice of large or
small drops. Aside from that minor complaint, it's still a pretty
stellar photo printer and not a bad text printer either.
The ip4500 added medium sized drops, which I presume (haven't seen) is
good on papers that the small 1pl drops don't work well.
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In the not canon you have the HP d5460 starting at £100. It's a new
model so I can't speak from direct experience, but Druckerchannel did
a review on it, and it's now in English
http://www.druckerchannel.de/artikel.php?ID=2353&seite=6&t=test_hp_ph...
It might cost a little more to print black text, but there at least
seems like it does a slightly better job than Canon at least according
to druckerchannel. Photos I'd have to see side to side to tell.
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Epson is still offering their Epson Photo R285, Price inc VAT
£49.99. My last experience with Epson was the r200, well excluding my
a3+ printers. As such I can't fairly compare what I have vs the
R285. I can compare the r200 to the ip4000 and the r200 was certainly
better on CDs, and required less color tweeking for CDs to look good.
The blacks on the ip4000 seemed to be shifted slightly toward the
blue. For photos, the r200 won. Mine went kaput, and it was cheaper
for me to sell the ink and buy a canon, which to be fair offered the
better general purpose printer, then it was for me to continue using
the Epson.
One Epson drawback is it uses a pump to clean the heads. Installing
it for the first time sucks up the ink, and from my observation it
seems to waste much ink in the cleaning process. The benefit is the
fact the head doesn't typically suffer from burnouts, only clogs. The
Canon, you can throw money at it to fix a printhead. I presume the
same is true for the new HP as well.
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So there you have it, three options to look at.
Canon AIO for 100 quid, the mp610
The HP stand alone also 100 quid
The epson r280 for 50 quid.
