Which Printer?

IvanOpinion

I am in the market for a new printer. My main issue, and the reason why my current Epson R200 is about to be put in the bin is because it is used very infrequently (may be idle for up to 3 or 4 months) and everytime I go to use it at least one of the cartridges fails to work ... I then replace the cartridge and have to waste half of it running it through pages and pages of head cleaning before the results are acceptable. I was therefore considering a printer that has the print head built into the cartridge (HP or Lexmark?) ... at least then I can just replace the cartridge.

It is mainly used for the production of letters and photographs. Any suggestions?

Thanks
Ivan

Sola

I had a Lexmark which refused to work when I moved to Vista. Yesterday I got an Epson DX8450 (printer/scanner/copier); I'm very impressed so far by the quality, but obviously it's still so new. Not sure where it stands with your print head question - it has 4 individual ink cartridges.

toasterman

If it weren't for the photographs, I'd suggest a laser printer. You can get a HP/Samsung/Brother laser printer (mono-only) for under £60.

If you only use it every 3-4 months, and then wind up wasting half a ream of paper, and half a cartridge of ink cleaning it - have you considered using an online photo-printing service?
Photo printing at home often works out more expensive than getting it printed elsewhere.

If you're sticking with your current system though - 100 pages of paper isn't that expensive. It's an annoying waste, but it's cheaper than a new set of cartridges every time.

Reggie_Rebel

You could just print a Test Page every week.

It will use little ink and paper and keep the heads from clogging

Amr310562

This is a very common problem with all inkjet printers that do not get much use, the ink in the print heads dry up, ink contains alot of water any way.

A solution that works in 85/90% of cases are printhead cleaning cartridges, you put them in the printer for which ever colour of ink will not print properly. The ones we sell are reuseable and work for on average 5-6 times each.

Folow this link for the R200 cleaning cartridges.

http://www.abcartridges.co.uk/index.php?cPath=2_897_981

Regards


Amr

fwor

Ivan - I have exactly the same problem: Current printer is an Epson, and it dries up if I forget to run a colour print through it every few weeks. The annoying thing is that it's very hard to get at the printheads to clean them.

Something that Coolagary mentioned in this thread:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=669949

was that in his Canon, the printheads are easy to remove and can be unclogged easily in warm water, which has got to be cheaper than buying head cleaning cartridges. However... it seems that Canon have "chipped" cartridges, which, though they can be moved to a compatible replacement cartridge, can't easily be reset to show the cartridge as full.

IvanOpinion

I bought a new printer over Christmas and decided on the HP 5160 (which I picked up from PC World for £45.04 on a price match with Dixons (they originally wanted £79.99) ). One of the reasons I picked it was because it used the tri-colour cartridge (I had considered the HP7160 but it required 6 or 7 ink tanks). Hopefully if the cartridge dries up it should be a case of throwing it in the bin and fitting a new cartridge .. and not having to buy a new printer

Thanks everybody for your comments.

ivan

letsbehonest

Canon MP460 multifunction printer scanner ect Argos £24.99 can't go wrong at this price, bought one last week nice piece of kit.

loksat

letsbehonest wrote: »

Canon MP460 multifunction printer scanner ect Argos £24.99 can't go wrong at this price, bought one last week nice piece of kit.

canon is a good choice after HP.

renegade

Has Canon i250 for a couple of years now, not used all that frequently but never had a problem with it, plus that Tesco sell the cartridges realy cheap.