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Need a new printer - who can help?

Aug 20, 2012 12:49 PM

My fiancé has decided that my current printer (a Woot! Epson Workforce 600) is not sufficient for her needs of printing portions of our wedding stuff (envelopes and whatnot). I tend to agree, as the printer is a POS. She is looking for a printer with the following specs:

Photo quality prints (whatever that means)
Inkjet
Able to print on cardstock
Mac compatible

I would greatly prefer it to be wifi, and I would love if it was an all in one (with a document feeder), but I can live without the document feeder and if it the best way to meet her specs if a machine that is purely a printer, well, such is life.

Thusfar, she has come up with a Canon PIXMA MG8220 (and I've decided that the PIXMA MG6220 is also compatible with our needs) and an HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus.

What do you guys think?

dcalotta dcalotta

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I am in love with my Lexmark Pinnacle Pro 901. Best bang-for-the-buck on inks, all-in-one format, Wifi, Bluetooth, USB 2.0, Ethernet and reads many types of memory cards and flash drives.

kamnet kamnet
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I'm a fan of HP printers but I don't think that particular model will feed cardstock. Be sure you check that out before you buy.

farmist farmist
vote-for2vote-against

Yeah I vote laser printer (get a steal of a deal for a used one on Craigslist). If you must get an ink-jet, Brother is your best value especially when talking ink replacement.

But seeing as you and her have different ideas/uses... why not get 2 printers? You'll both need to print b&w documents for day to day stuff probably and will get a ton of use from it. Plus, you'll save a ton of money by using the laser printer for those type of uses.

llamabox llamabox
vote-for3vote-against

@dcalotta: Get the Office Jet. The PIXMA tends to jam at the most expensive possible times (i.e. halfway through printing those invitations). I'm on my third all in one, and I've been happy with every one of them. My current printer is an L7650, and the feeder is one of the most important reasons I have it. I used to send out multipage faxes, and doing that one page at a time would be horrible.

It prints on photo paper, or regular paper, and I've even used it to make business cards.

shrdlu shrdlu
vote-for3vote-against

She looked at lasers and wasn't thrilled with the print resolution they advertise. Now, I'm sure that advertised DPI is the same as advertised PPM or the weight loss potential advertised by Pill XYZ on tv at 4AM, but such is life. Unfortunately, I could look at two documents and if one was 300dpi and the other was 30,000 dpi, I'd have no idea - but she is a graphic designer working in print mediums, so I suppose her eye is a bit more trained.

I agree with you re: the inkjet business model. For my uses, I'd love a laser (monochrome, at that), but I'm not the only user here. :(

dcalotta dcalotta
vote-for4vote-against

@dcalotta: Sorry for misunderstanding the question. I thought photo quality meant that you were going to print photos.

So if you're not going to print photos, why not get a laser printer instead? Inkjet printers have issues such as high costs of printing and jets getting clogged if you don't use the printer frequently.

A laser printer costs a bit more up-front but saves you money in the long run.

It is my opinion that companies are selling inkjet printers below their manufacturing costs because they know they will get their profit from you later in the costs of the ink. They are very protective of their ink and do not allow other companies to make compatible cartridges by patent control as well as having proprietary chips installed in their cartridges.

You may be able to refill your cartridges with 3rd party ink but it has been proven that the cheaper ink has its own set of problems such as bad archival times and wrong pantone matching.

cengland0 cengland0
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@cengland0: I don't think she is actually looking to print photos - she is looking for a high (I know it's a relative term) DPI printer, which tend to be branded as photo printers.

dcalotta dcalotta
vote-for6vote-against

What I think is that you should stay away from inkjet printers.

It is actually more cost effective to take your prints to walmart or Sams and have them print them for you. With the price of ink and the price of photo quality paper, it is hard to justify printing these yourself when several companies can print them for you cheaper.

cengland0 cengland0

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