Printers

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Buying a Printer

June 2010 Want a cheap printer ? If you long for the days when you had a little Epson 640, they now do one that looks similar called the Stylus S21 at around £30.30, delivered free (Amazon). It is a lot slower than they claim - a big colour photo of reasonable quality will take a couple of minutes - and it a a bit noisy but reasonably cheap to run, especially with compatible ink (set of 4) at around £11. Not really suitable if you use a 'workstation' as the paper feeds in from the back.

Heavy duty printing Some printers will simply reject card (say 220gsm) but it is surprisingly difficult to find one that is recommended for this work. Of course a straight path is essential, so most HP printers and All in Ones are out of the question unless they say 'two way feed' like the Canon PIXMA MP560 (£116 free delivery Amazon June 2010). Ink is still fairly expensive at over £35 (for five cartridges) but the clone makers may do them cheaper.

n.b. If you have lots of empty Hewlett Packard, Xerox or Lexmark ink cartridges you can get as much as £3.50 each for them by contacting Cartex at http://www.cartex.co.uk/cgi-bin/empty_inkjet_cartridges.asp or see prices at http://www.empty-inkjet-cartridges.com/prices_paid.asp. This is not a 'click through'.

Computer Active did a lab study which showed that the cost of ownership of some inkjet printers over an 18 month period can be as high as £1,775! This was based on printing 30 colour pages a week, using original cartridges - but excluding the cost of paper.

It is difficult to advise what printer you should get because, as with computers, it depends on what you wish to do with it. Things to take into account are speed of output, whether you need quality colour, the location and - almost most of all - the cost per page. More about this at the end of this article.....However, I have recently been investigating economy printers and I find that Canon, like most of the other manufacturers have gone down the road of restricting the use of clone cartridges (and charging a lot for their own). It is now more difficult to find a printer that uses clones. I like my HP printer but, on cost grounds, it loses out. It cost about the same to buy some printers as it does to replace a couple of my HP cartridges. I tend to refill them, get refills or shop around on the net. However, it is still possible to get cheap clone cartridges for most Epsons. For instance, in 2010, if you bought original cartridges for a cheap Epson Stylus SX110 All in One printer for £37.99 + post and replaced them one by one they would cost £14 each - a total of £56 + post. But you could buy clone cartridges (not refilled ones) with three complete sets (i.e. 12 cartridges) for £10.99. But if you buy and HP or Lexmark printer, their cartridges are copyright. You may pay a little less for refilled ones but, however long they last compared with the Epson it is difficult to imagine it could compete with those cheap clones.

Printers change even faster than computers, so any reference to a specific model would be out of date before I uploaded this to the site

GENERAL

The most popular printers, by far, are Colour Inkjets. They all produce excellent correspondence quality these days and the speed of the slowest is adequate for the (patient) home user. You should never trust the manufacturer's claimed speeds as they probably refer to a lightly printed page in Draft Mode. More of this later. But it is certainly possible for the faster inkjets to keep up with what laser printers do. One £70 Epson claims to produce a business letter in 1.6 seconds (that is an incredible 37 pages per minute) That said, mono laser printers are now down to the price of the inkjets (well under £100 - see below). So, why not buy a laser ? Generally their cost per copy is much lower but apart from more expensive colour ones (now down in price) they only print in black or grey. But, personally I have a cheap laser for mono (and waterproof) printing and an inkjet for colour. I was also surprised to find that a (Canon) colour laser printed quite good glossy photos on plain paper. It has 4 cartridges and each cost £35 but last a great deal longer than inkjets.

It is very important to make comparisons before buying. But there is no general rule even for one manufacturer's products. In one old test the Canon S830D cost nearly 10p per page for colour. The Canon S530D cost only 3.5p. The HP Deskjet cost over 15p in colour (but a lot less if you refill yourself)

Watch out for how much ink there is in cartridges. Older printers used to use cartridges with up to 40 millilitres of ink. These days you can buy a printer which uses HP cartridges which contain as little as 5 ml of ink ! (e.g. Types 342 and 110) According to my conversion tables that is a metric teaspoonful. If you sneezed it would disappear ! And they cost £16 each (Viking). If you don't believe me, study the Viking catalogue. The average older HP cartridge (e.g type 57a) is around 17 ml, so the variation is astonishing. Look out for the double pack offers. But watch out for the economy sizes e.g. Type 57GE LC (light capacity) has only one quarter the volume of ink.

For cheaper original HP cartridges try www.choicestationery.co.uk, IJT or www.cartridgemonkey.com or do like a friend did and get them on Ebay. These were a 'Buy now' advert and they worked out at around £7 less than you would pay in a shop (for colour - type 57a)

Mono Laser Printers If your requirement is for black and grey printing only you would do well to consider a mono laser printer. Cost per copy varies between 1.13ppp to 3.35ppp You can get a respectable mono laser such as the Brother HL-2035 for £77.70, delivered. Text is perfectly formed and, these days, mono photos are very acceptable. As well as a colour printer I ALWAYS have a mono laser for text. The cartridges seem to go on for ever and they don't keep you waiting for results.

All in one or Multipurpose Another type of printer is the Printer/Scanner/Copier/Fax machine combo. If you are need more than one of these functions (or just need the desk space) it may pay to look at these, which can be as a little as £45 or less these days (Epson,Canon, Lexmark,HP) and they may be wireless and have memory card slots, so you can stick your camera memory card in and some have touch screens to control them.

Clone Cartridges ? : It is no use saving on cheaper cartridges if the result is poor. I have usually found the quality of photo printing satisfactory with clone cartridges. In the case of one Computer Shopper article the results for some of the clones were encouraging, being judged equal to or better than the originals.

Epson were not going to miss out for ever on this market so their current printers use a cartridge which includes a 'chip'. These are more expensive still but the 'clone' makers soon caught on and imitated this technique. But Epson are still trying to prevent their cartridges being copied. So, you would be lucky to find an Epson printer that doesn't use 'chipped' cartridges. The old 400, 600, C20 and C46 ranges used non chipped ones and were cheaper to run. N.B. Jettec, one of the refill companies says "Some Epson cartridges have a memory device which stores the ink level. You will need to purchase a Jettec chip resetter to reset the ink level before you can re-use (refill) the cartridge" Both Epson and HP printers may show the ink level as empty even after you have replaced the cartridge with a new 'clone'.

Hewlett Packard Cartridges (and Xerox/Lexmark) not only contain the ink but also the print head and some electrical contacts. These cartridges are patented, though you can get 'remanufactured' ones - even in Tesco. Some do refills, which are a little cheaper and you can refill them yourself (which saves a lot). It is a messy job and there is a limit to how many times you can refill before the print head becomes inaccurate. But you may feel it is worthwhile with a pair of HP cartridges costing as much as £44. Most Lexmark cartridges are in the same price bracket.

You may have noticed that some printers and cameras are described as having 'Pictbridge' capability. This means that you can connect the camera directly to the printer, see a display of a picture on the printer and print it without the need to start your computer.

Speed. Printing speeds vary enormously. You should take the advertiser's claims with a large pinch of salt. ALL quoted speeds are based on DRAFT mode. With some printers this can be quite faint and is certainly no use for photographs. That said it is quite a good idea to set your printer to draft mode for day to day work. In addition to making your cartridges last twice as long you will find the pages arrive much quicker. You can always change back to a higher quality for an individual job. HP printout tends to smudge until you have allowed the print to dry for at least a couple of minutes. But for standard correspondence an HP printer looks pretty good in Draft mode - and smudges less. Change the 'default' mode via Start, Settings, Printers, Properties rather than when printing an individual file (which will just revert to the previous settings next time)

Photo Printing Glossy paper can be from 10p per sheet upwards (but try Aldi) and to get anywhere near the weight of the paper used by the pros you need to look for at least 275gsm on the box. This could cost you £1 a sheet ! So, if you want cheap (and high quality) prints of your photos, I suggest that you take or them to a professional photoprinter. Take your disk or memory card to Boots or upload your pictures to an on line service e.g. Ebuyer. Saves a lot of hassle. You can always enlarge the favourite ones later. Doing it yourself might be convenient but it is certainly not economical. The alternative is to have a useful viewer (e.g. Microsoft's Picture Viewer in slideshow mode or Picasa) on your computer and display them there full screen. Or send them to friends with an email (or CD) or display them on a photo website such as Kodak or Picasa. That way you wont notice them yawn !

Location : You need a printer that will fit in with your work area. Many printers have a paper feed at the back and feed out at the front. It is surprising how much room this takes up and if you use a workstation type desk this style may not be convenient. A Hewlett Packard printer (or most lasers and all in ones) feeds paper in from the front and out to the front and is more suitable in cramped situations or in cupboards, on shelves or some workstations.

A word about connections. Older printers were designed to connect via the 25 pin parallel port at the back of your computer but these days almost all may have a connection to the half-inch USB type port that all recent PC's have. There is no great advantage in one or the other. If your new laptop has no 25 pin socket and you want to use your old printer you can get a 25 pin to USB adapter. Try Ebay. But shops rarely supply a USB cable so you have to be prepared to buy this extra. The prices charged for cables by the average 'box shifter' are very high. As much as £14 for what would be £2 or less at a computer fair or cheap shop.

Connecting over a network. Many people now have a small network at home either connected by wires or wirelessly theough a 'router' which may have been supplied by your broadband supplier. Obviously, young Mike will want to be able to print his homework and there is just one printer connected to the main one. How does one share this printer ?

First go to the printer section on the computer to which your printer is attached...or is wirelessly connected if a wireless printer. You may have to go to Start, Printers (if necessary go via Control Panel). Right click on the printer and click on Sharing and tick Share this printer. Add a name to that printer. Now go to the laptop or other remote PC. What I do is create a small document with Wordpad, then go File, Print. The printer will not appear until you click Add a printer, Search for a Printer. When it finds one click that to add it. Then try and print the small document

STOP THAT PRINT JOB !

One problem people mention is that, if they wish to stop the print run part way through, this can be difficult. Normally, printing is sent to your computer and then on to the printer. You will notice a delay whilst the computer 'thinks' about it. And the slower the computer (and more complex the page) the longer it will think. But, if you then go to stop the print run by switching off the printer or for some other reason the printing is interrupted e.g paper jam, when you switch the printer on (or free the paper jam) the computer keeps on sending information along the cable. It may even turn the printing into 'garbage' and may print a couple of lines of this on each page. You should be able to clear the printing by going to a printer icon on the bottom line. The software varies but you should be able to Cancel the print from there. Unfortunately, this does not always work and there is always a delay. If that does not work you may have to turn the PC and printer off. Even this does not always clear the print 'buffer/queue' held by the computer. Try leaving the computer off for a little while before switching it on again. It is quite important to clear (cancel) any unprinted items as you may (WILL) find that you cannot print anything more until you do. But, if you get through a load of paper and ink during this exercise, all I can say is - you are not alone !

Problems. All inkjet printers are likely to clog up (the ink jets) from time to time, especially if left to dry out for a while. You may not realise this until you print a colour photo and it comes out all blue or orange. Most printer software comes with a test facility to determine which of the colours is not printing correctly. Then there is usually a head cleaning routine.(see your manual) This attempts to suck ink through the jets until they are clean. Sometimes this will work with one cleaning; sometimes you have to do it several times. The procedure is very wasteful of ink, often sucking through all the colours and black and wasting it onto a big piece of blotting paper hidden in the base of the printer. Sometimes it doesn't work at all and you are left with a printer that is, say, only good for printing black. What to do ? I have tried all the possibilities, from dismantling the printer to injecting water through the jets (Epson) to my latest effort with an HP 930C. Nothing would make it print Yellow so, as a photo printer, it was a write off. I drilled a hole in the top of the cartridge (over the yellow compartment), injected a large quantity of yellow ink and, finally, blew down the hole until the ink came out of the jets ! One nice HP930C was saved from the scrap heap.

Tips: To prevent drying out it is as well to use a printer at least once a week. If you buy cartridges in bulk (having remortgaged!) bear in mind that they have around one year shelf life, though keeping them in a fridge is said to increase this.

Tips on refilling. You can buy refill kits for most makes of cartridge. I have tended to use packs from Inktec for my HP. Be sure to wear rubber or plastic gloves if you want your hands to look decent after. Keep them on until you have completed the job, replaced the cartridge and given it a test. Do the whole job over a sink that can be washed down after. Make sure you know where the refilling holes are. Some cartridges have to be pierced using a supplied augur. Hold each bottle upside down and pierce the cap with the hypodermic needle. Try not to inect air into the cartridge. Most printers have difficulty sucking the first ink through and have various techniques to do this. In the case of HP cartridges you may find a 'cradle' in the refilling kit along with a larger hypodermic tube. This should be connected to the rubber protruding from the bottom of the cradle and the hypo tube used to suck a small amount of ink through. In the case of a triple colour cartridge the combined inks coming through should be almost black. Some pinters may 'chunter' away to themselves for 30 secods when they detect a new cartridge as been loaded, then send out a test sheet. If the first print looks as if any of the inks have failed to come through you may have to try different techniques. Read the manual. Generally, if you click on Start, Printers and right click the printer and then on Properties, you can check if there is a Utility to clean the cartridge and do a test print. Do not be surprised if the ink level shown under Properties is incorrect. It doesn't matter as long as it works. In the case of Canon you may be asked to confirm that a cartridge has been changed. If you are refilling more than one cartridge, stick tape over the top and bottom until you wish to use them.

And finally.... To get a 'professional' opinion as to which printer to buy read the section at the back of each Computer Active called Computeractive Recommends

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