Picking The Best Ink And Paper For Your Inkjet Printer

[ram1009]

Why is anyone still using ink jet printers when lasers are so cheap?

 

[TonyJ]

For photos, ink jet is better.

 

[king smp]

I run with a dual printer setup,
I use a HP 3055 B&W laser all in one for my everyday draft pages
since I got it secondhand cheap with a full toner
and costs pennies for pages (print flyers for business)
Then I use a HP OfficeJet 7310 netork all in one dual sided printing.
for color prints
I do not do that much color printing but I like to use HP
ink and HP paper.
Usually trade in cartridges at Staples (do computer repair
and I come across alot of scrap printers)
and use the money towards sale paper and paper with rebates
I do always get colorlok paper.
For alot of home users printing isnt a major thing
but for people with small businesses it is vital to
keep costs down and have good quality
Thank you Toms for a good informative article
Any way you can do benchmarks on printing LOL

 

[K33]

[No message]

 

[CaedenV]

Wife and I got tired of spending $150+ on ink every 8-10 months to keep the Epson printer happy. Very nice printer, but all that we ever did was print text, and the occasional joke pic that wasn't worth wasting the nice paper on. Finally we decided to look into a cheap B&W laser printer and we found an HP wireless laser printer for $70 (normally $150! score!). We bought 1 laser cartridge for it after the beginner cartridge ran out ($80), and we print all the time and it still says the new cartridge is at 75% after a year of printing. On the rare occasion we need to print something nice I go to Staples where I have some friends and we use their nice industrial printers to get things done. Looks way better than the nice Epson, and the overall costs are easily 1/2 of what we paid to keep the ink printer happy.
Sure, costs more up front, but after the 2nd year it has already paid for itself in savings. Not sure why anyone (except photo enthusiasts) would ever do anything different.

 

[Guest]

very informative article. thanks.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I was disappointed for two reasons.

First, the title was "Picking The Best Ink And Paper For Your Inkjet Printer". Instead the article was about paper and ink for photos.

Second, paper for documents was ignored. Not all paper is equal. A good example would be paper for archival material.

 

[Guest]

It would be great if you did reviews of 3rd party ink. Don't think there is a site that does that.

 

[11796pcs]

Get an expensive printer (like $300) so that your ink is cheap- problem solved! Some of the high end printers never need inkheads replaced, you just get refiller cartridges that do not include the inkhead on them. Instead they just feed ink to the inkheads.

 

[The Halo Don]

You gotta love how they have a lady with massive amounts of cleavage in the pictures.

lulz.

 

[kathiki]

try searching the web for the Epson printer and ink experience. It produces some awesome results in knowing what a rip-off in terms of ink Epson can be. The chip on their cartridges will deliberately show low ink levels when some pages have been printed or some idle time has passed... there is a software and a small device that resets the cartridges to think they are full again.

As for the clogging matter.... I have tried Epson ink cartridges and still my ink printer clogs after some time of inactivity... if you try to clean it through it software process it literally destroys your ink levels... trying to install 3rd party ink cartridges will often result in the printer refusing to accept to recognise the cartridges.....

software is callled CIS resetter...... google it for some really impressive finds........

inkjet companies will do anything to rip us off

 

[WyomingKnott]

A side-note on Colorlok - I write with fountain pens almost exclusively. That's how I found out about Colorlok paper: I noticed how much better the paper that they have at my office holds the ink.

How's that for two extremes - fountain pens and selfbuilt computers? At least I'm not chiseling marks into a rock.

 

[Anaxamenes]

Good job Tom's. It's nice to see an article that is useful for digital photographers and graphic designers. Thanks!

 

[bob100684]

http://www.wilhelm-research.com a lot better information than presented here, complete with fade testing.

 

[dark_knight33]

[citation][nom]Arbie[/nom]More than print quality, my biggest problem is that the cartidges go dry = empty all by themselves, just sitting there for a few weeks. This is in a Canon ip-4000 printer. Leakage of so much ink would be obvious, so it isn't that. It just disappears. I live in a dry climate, but all of the ink including pigment is gone so it doesn't seem to be evaporation. It's as if the cartridges had simply been used up, which I know hasn't been done since only I have access to the printer.==> Does anyone else have this problem? Put in all new cartridges, print two or three pages, let it sit for several weeks and then find one or two cartridges almost empty? [/citation]

Simple answer: Your Kids/Spouse/Stealthy Neighboor is printing out porn when your not around. Drys the ink up real fast.

 

[Guest]

i noticed all users are given different view on your article,i gain lot of knowledge from view,thanks all
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