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Color Printing Without the Inkjet Mess?
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Jul 21, 2003 09:49 PM
from the pick-any-two dept.
from the pick-any-two dept.
Above writes "Many recent /. stories have been about the problems of inkjet Printers. Seems they all want to sell the printer for cheap, and then use the ink to make up the difference. There are also problems where a lack of printing, or printing too much, could make it much more expensive to use your inkjet. So, since mine just died, what are the best options? I'm intersted in two catagories, a 'personal' color printer, probably USB to a machine, and a 'workgroup' color printer, with ethernet, postscript prefered. While Windows is good for my application, something that plays well with FreeBSD and Linux would be a major win as well. I'd consider laser if it's cheap enough (read $500/printer), and I don't think that it is. I'm willing to pay a bit more for the printer if that means bigger ink tanks, better cleaning, and easier to buy replacement supplies, the question is, are there really good options out there or have the low-end 'throwaway' printers taken over the market?" One option is a modded inkjet like the ones here, liberated from tiny ink cartridges. Any recommendations out there for decent color lasers?
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Color Printing Without the Inkjet Mess?
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Color Laser Printeres (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.scallion.sp00fed.net/)
Re:Color Laser Printeres (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Color Laser Printeres (Score:5, Informative)
For one offs they slowdown for photos, but for multiple prints they will put out high speed continually for even high coverage.
Also your print quality should be a non issue for multiple prints too.
Once the data is to the printer and prossessed everything will run about the same.
Re:Color Laser Printeres (Score:4, Funny)
I've heard about some marker refills but they'll probably be shut down as soon as Crayola starts putting chips in the markers.
Re:Color Laser Printeres (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.calethix.com/)
Sounds better than most ink jet printers to me. At least you don't have to run to the store and buy a new kid complete with his own box of half used crayons.
Not the HP 4600!!! (Was: Re:Color Laser Printeres) (Score:5, Informative)
My predecssor got suckered by the very cheap up-front purchase price on this machine. It was, IIRC, something in the order of AUD$3900.00.
'course, it is during my reign and my budget that the beast needs new toner cartridges, isn't it! AUD$400.00 a pop (times four, C, M, Y, and K)
This machine proved to be so expensive to run that we made a commercial decision to shut it off for a few months, and now we run it with a FreeBSD box bridging it from the rest of the network, with MAC layer filtering restricting access to just a couple of people.
It isn't even that nice a printer on quality terms. Any cheap inkjet gives far better quality (resolution, clarity, colour match, etc) results than this huge beast!
Your Mileage May Vary - mine obviously does!
Re:Color Laser Printeres (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.yhbt.com/)
Don't you mean an extra couple thousand bucks?
Re:Color Laser Printeres (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.google.com/search?q=Vlad+Krupin)
And the coolest thing about it is that it uses ink sticks! You just feed them into the printer, so there is no catrige to replace, no scam with expiring catriges, no ink wasted. As it uses up a certain color, you add more sticks of that color. That's all.
If they ever become available in my price range, I want one at home!
Re:Color Laser Printeres (Score:5, Informative)
Wonderful features, price was around $1k, great prints.
When you could get them...
I think we probably printed about 150 sheets with the thing. And we had to have the fuser replaced even to get that.
It was impossible to keep it running. It is impossible to get it repaired (without an expensive service contract it costs about $500 plus milage to get someone to look at it.)
Right now it just sits there. It jams every time a sheet goes through.
Any time I see a Xerox product now I run.
Re:Color Laser Printeres (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
There are some serious drawbacks with this printer.
(1) It can't print gray except at the lowest quality setting. At any reasonable (i.e., non-fax-looking) setting the gray comes out seriously brown.
(2) The ink ain't cheap.
(3) The ink rubs off under moderate pressure. Worse yet, it you print out a bunch of pages and leave them stacked up for a few weeks, they stick together and when you separate them, ink sticks to the backs of the other pages.
(4) Its RGB->CMYK conversion is atrocious, resulting in washed-out colors.
(5) The dither is far coarser than you'd get with a comparably-priced color laser. This means you can't do good gradients unless they're quite dark from start to finish. And photos with light areas look dotty.
(6) Its PMS matching is totally useless. The colors aren't even vaguely similar.
If you come pick it up, I'd just about give you ours. We spend a lot of money on color laser prints at Kinkos because of all the 850's output-quality problems. It's useless for serious proofs.
Color Lasers are an option but perhaps consider... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://news.google.com/)
I use two Kodak 8650 [kodak.com] printers (pick one up for a couple grand on ebay) for a commercial application that is probably beyond the scope of the submitter, but the quality (indistinguishable from a lab print), reliability (over 800 9x14" prints/week at times), and durability (light-fast for more than 20 years)
Olympus [olympusamerica.com], Kodak [kodak.com], Sony [sonystyle.com], and others have items at more reasonable price points.
No doubt; for color, go dye-sub. Then again, I own an Epson 1280 photo [epson.com] that does really nice work as well. I have installed an Epson 2200 for a couple of clients and they are even better.
Canon (Score:4, Informative)
HP LaserJet 4600 (Score:3, Insightful)
Low Cost Laser (Score:3, Insightful)
Inkjets (Score:3, Informative)
Might depend on where you live / dumb laws. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.eskimospy.com/)
If you live in a backwards nation like the US (not-so-proudly a resident as of late) where the DMCA makes you pay out the ass for toner, then you are in a bind... pony up for a color laser, which, if you can expense out over time, or know you will be printing a lot for the next 4 years, will more than pay for itself, or.... Hmm, I dunno if there is a low up-front cost solution for long term color printing in a country that doesn't allow 3rd party ink carts / refills.
=(
I hopr somebody gives a better answer than this.
Re:Oh. My. GOD. (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.awdang.com/)
Et voila!
Re:Oh. My. GOD. (Score:5, Informative)
(http://wam.umd.edu/~dspeyer | Last Journal: Monday July 07 2003, @05:29PM)
IMHO, Lexmark's arguments are very strained, but resellers aren't looking for a fight, even one they can win. As a result, generic ink cartridges are hard to find.
obTopic: I think a lot of people are boycotting Lexmark over this, so don't go there, whatever you do.
Re:Oh. My. GOD. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://127.0.0.1/)
Color laser... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://garion.tzo.com/)
I got that for the reason that I don't print enough, and my ink was constantly drying out...
Re:Not for $500 (Score:5, Informative)
I, too, recommend the Epson 2200. I got one about eight months ago and it's pretty excellent.
It uses seven inks, which makes the printed images very smooth (cyan and magenta both have light-colored versions which improve dithering on all the shades of those colors). I've only changed cartridges once so far, so it's been ok on ink usage (though it doesn't seem exceptional).
There's also a hot-swappable black ink cartridge, so you can switch between Photo Black (for glossy papers) and Matte Black (for matte papers). The Matte Black is really impressive -- I printed an underwater photo of a Jellyfish and the blackness of the water is excellent.
Another nice thing is that it prints large formats -- up to 13" x 19".
I think they cost around $600 - $700 (mine was a gift :-)
Why not one of both? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have an older laser printer that prints reems of black and white (text documents mainly) and I've never replaced the toner. For photos I have a 100 dollar epson that prints out 7200x7200 or something ridiculous. The laser was 70 from ebay and the color printer was 60 dollars on special from best buy. Figure you'll print 2-3 cartridges worth of color and then buy a new printer (specs will have improved and at the cost of color printers a new one isn't much more than new cartridges).
The HP 4L I have is old but its a workhorse. 300dpi but it never complains about the documents I send it. Its outlasted 3 colorprinters now.
Free Color Printers (Score:5, Informative)
A friend of mine has two of these solid ink lasers. She has to buy ink from them at normal prices, but she gets all the black ink she wants for free. Service included. You have to qualify in terms of how much of various types of docs you print.
Re:Leave the last 's' on for 'savings' (Score:4, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
If you don't spend their secret Priceline minimum required amount on ink sticks, you have to pay a $75/month fee.
For that money you can get a business lease on an HP4500, which is a far better printer.
Re:Thermal wax printers (Score:5, Informative)
They still have a number of models, mostly still in the high-end departmental area.
There are certain tasks where the Phaser output is pretty nice. Because the wax-based pigments are opaque the colors are really saturated. Cost and mess factors are very low relative to inkjet printing. All these things make these printers continue to be a pretty strong choice for printing business graphics (charts, graphs, etc.). And as the RIP hardware has gotten much faster, it's not quite as long a lifetime to wait for output as in the old days.
But in terms of capability, I don't think they can touch the flexibility of inkjets. These days there are choices for pigment-based or dye-based inks so you can print opaque or transparently. And inkjets have much higher resolution, more flexibility on printing media, and are cheaper too.
Color ink cartrage for my Epson photo 820: $6 (Score:3)
(http://autopr0n.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 06 2005, @01:30AM)
List (Score:5, Informative)
Crayons! (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday November 08 2004, @10:00AM)
Printing is for wusses; crayons add so much "feel" and atmosphere to a picture!
Continuous Re-inking System (Score:3, Interesting)
color lasers.. (Score:3, Informative)
Inkjet vs. laser (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://home.swbell.net/kingtj | Last Journal: Saturday September 30 2006, @01:07PM)
I really do like a good color laser printer, BUT, I'm not convinced these are practical yet for most home users. I know prices have come down quite a bit - but a color laser is still a very complex piece of machinery. You generally have 4 toner cartridges, plus all the additional hardware that allows the printer to mix those toner colors on the page, fuser rolls, charger grids, and other assorted "disposable" items that aren't a factor with a plain black and white laser.
Everyone I know who bought a Xerox (formerly Tektronics) color laser is sitting there now with a broken laser in need of expensive repairs.
Inkjet printers have virtually no repair costs, because if one stops feeding paper properly or a print nozzle just quits squirting ink - you throw the thing away and buy a whole new (likely faster and better) printer for less than the cost of a service call, and you're back up and running.
Last time I saw a real cost analysis done, a color laser cost you about 2 or 3 cents per page to print in full color. If you buy the right inkjet printer, the cost is probably about 4 to 5 cents per page.
These cost calculations don't factor in the issue of repairing or replacing broken printers. They make the assumption that both units are fully functional for the duration of time you print those pages. Figuring in repair costs, I'd say an inkjet becomes cheaper and more convenient in the long-haul. (They use less electricity too.)
There are good inkjets (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
I've had an HP Photosmart 1000 for over 2 years now with no problems. This printer goes through a couple of idle months, followed by couple days of heavy photo printing. Runs like a champ. Of course cartridge prices are a little high, but printers with dedicated black cartidges are a lot more economical to run that ones without. Given the amount of printing I do, it's still more affordable than laser.
I think you'll have a hard time buying a color laser in the price range your looking for. If your willing to pony up the cash, today's color lasers are really nice and the way to go. If you are going to do a lot of printing, the laser will be cheaper in the long run.
Solid wax printers (Score:5, Informative)
(http://bitmason.com/)
As far as connectivity and compatibility...
Windows: Great. Drivers are easy found and work great.
Linux: The printer sits on our LAN with its own IP address, etc. so when I print from my Linux desktop I simply have a script that fires the [text/PDF]->Postscript straight into the printer's listening port. And I'm sure there's a better way to print to this printer from Linux (with Samba) that allows for proper queuing, etc.
First cavaet: The printer has a warmup sequence that keeps itself clean and ensures liquid wax is ready when needed. The good news is you never really have to think about turning it on or off or whatever; it just wakes up and warms itself up. (In fact, don't turn it off or it goes through an extended power-up cycle that burns additional wax.) The downside here is that it does burn a small amount of color wax each warmup and eventually I guess you'd run out of the color wax even if you weren't doing color printing. In real usage, this hasn't been an issue for our office, but I thought I'd mention it.
Second cavaet: This is a fairly big, heavy, expensive printer. It performs like a professional printer, not a light-duty home inkjet. So you do get what you pay for here, in my opinion.
Ours is an 800-series Phaser, but here [xerox.com] are some current models from Xerox. And check into the free black wax issue -- I'm not sure if it's still the standard policy.
Workgroup Inkjets (Score:5, Interesting)
Networked inkjets, as late as a year ago, were fairly prevalent, with models available from just about all of the major vendors. I don't know what happened - whether it's a sign that color laser is entering the sub-$1000 marketspace or what - but when we looked for a networked color inkjet, HP was really the best option out there.
Epson seems to have dropped their mid-range workgroup inkjets. The only model they have networked out of the box is the C82, which is a rather low-end printer - nothing I'd consider a workgroup printer. Canon likewise has absolutely no networked inkjets at all.
Lexmark has a few networked inkjets, but what with the recent stuff with their using the DMCA to corner the inkjet cartridge market, and given we've used Lexmark printers and had mediocre quality out of them, I decided to pass. The only model they are still marketing/selling is the Lexmark Optra Color 45n, if you're interested.
HP has a couple of decent models - the 2280 and the 3000. We ended up going with the 2280 here, but both are very good models. The one caveat that I'd have to say - make sure you get the latest JetDirect EIO card. The older ones had a PITA for a web interface, while the new ones are a dream to work with (and support ZeroConf/Rendezvous!)
No more ink for me: Kinkos KFP and clubphoto.com (Score:5, Informative)
You get what you pay for... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://justinpedia.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 18 2001, @12:45AM)
Generally, my experience with color inkjet printers has been that you get what you pay for. My first color inkjet was a Lexmark 5700 that my folks bought for me. I think it was moderately priced back in the day. And that printer performed admirably. It was fairly quick, produced good quality output, and was pretty reliable until it up and quit on me for no real reason one day.
I replaced that one with a Lexmark Z23 because on paper it had similar specs to my old 5700. Yeah, it was cheaper, but I just kind of assumed that the Z23 was a cheaper, updated version of my old 5700. Wrong. I had more problems with that printer than I've ever had with any other printer. It seems like every time I printed out a document to turn in for school, I had to clean the nozzles 2 or 3 times and realign the cartridges. Even then, I would still have some gaps in the print where the printer just didn't seem to cover.
Since then I have bought a used HP Deskjet 895ci. The thing was in practically brand new condition and I have yet to experience any problems with it.
I don't necessarily think that the market has been taken over by the cheap printers. Yes, they are quite common and they sell very well. But, I think that as long as you are willing to spend a little more than the average consumer (I'm guessing above the $150 range) then you will probably get a halfway decent color inkjet printer.
Let me translate this posting (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.microsoft.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 16 2003, @10:33PM)
What the author really means is "I intend to use this exclusively on Windows. But since this is Slashdot, I have to mention *nix somewhere to get it posted."
Continuous Flow Printers - my experience (Score:3, Insightful)
Why buy any printer at all? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Minolta (Score:3, Informative)
Plus side: Takes standard PC100 or PC133 ram, so stuck some old dimms in it to take it up to 192MB or so.
Down side: It doesn't come with much RAM to begin with.
Plus side: It comes with a 100baseT port built in.
Down side: Speaks an officially undocumented, but apparently well-known queueing protocol.
Plus side: It was under $600 shipped.
Down side: Comes with partially filled toner cartridges, good for like 2000 pages instead of 5000 or something equally unfull.
Plus side: You can buy individual toner carts, instead of all 4 CYMK carts at once.
Down side: Toner costs a lot, like $125 per cartridge.
Plus side: Prints really fast, like a real 4 ppm color and a real 16 ppm b&w
Down side: Takes like two minutes to warm up out of stand-by.
YMMV, I was too lazy to double-check my facts and just went from tequila-addled memory.
Canon (Score:3, Informative)
(Last Journal: Tuesday September 25, @06:21PM)
And of course Canon printers are supported by foomatic. My BJC-2110 works with Red Hat 9 out of box.
Printing in Windows (Score:3, Informative)
Actually I have tried 2 printers with the gimp-print drivers for linux, both perform better than windows (note i only use b&w).
I had a Desktop 340 (smallest printer i've ever seen, smaller than the size of 2 shoeboxes or so.. and quite old) ... the quality was a tad higher in linux, but the quality is so poor already its hard to notice a difference
Epson Stylus Colour 600 ... now this surprised me.... the quality is poor in windows... even at highest quality at 1440 res... lots of bleeding... in linux it is like a high quality laser printer (even though it takes 10 minutes or longer to print a page), and even with hardware microweaving off (which can damage the heads) it is excellent quality... and the thing is somebody gave me this printer because they were dissapointed with the quality...
my guess is the manufacturers make the drivers use more ink then is really needed so you gotta pay for another cartridge ... or they for some reason cant make quality drivers...
Call me cheap, I don't care. I like my Canon i320 (Score:3, Informative)
Its a USB printer, so I can use it with my iBook and my PC, will someday setup the wireless printer through XP, but that is another post.
I recommend... (Score:3, Informative)
(file:///etc/passwd)
I also got a hawking USB print server (~ $60) [hawkingtech.com] and it's now a network printer.
Take a look at how easy [hawkingtech.com] it is to assign this thing an ip address and have a network printer.
Minolta 2300 DL and dotphoto.com (Score:4, Informative)
(http://home.comcast.net/~rickrich1/)
I gave up on inkjets last February. I had already switched to doing my photo printing using dotphoto.com for about .15-.19 per photo.
I bought a Minolta 2300 DL network color laser on sale from OfficeMax for $600. The network interface is included in the base price, which makes this printer the best bargain I've seen in a color laser printer. An optional duplexer adds about $330 to the price. The protocol used by this printer is Zenographics ZjStream (JBIG based). I wrote an open source driver for it, called foo2zjs [rr.com].
The printer with my driver is good enough for business graphics and casual photo printing. The resolution of this printer is 2400x600 with one bit (1 dot size) per CMYK color plane. The printer is not good enough for photo printing, but I prefer dotphoto.com for that anyway. For the price, I would buy htis printer again.
I've also got an unreleased driver for the HP LaserJet 1500 color laser printer. This printer uses Oak Technologies OAKT protocol, also JBIG based. This printer has two bits (3 dot sizes) per CMYK plane. The driver currently produces output that can be parsed and turned back into the original page images, but has never been tested on a real LJ 1500. I shelved further work on the OAKT driver due to HP's lack of interest in loaning me a LaserJet 1500 for final testing.
Linux Friendly, Excellent Color Printer. (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.aesgi.com/)
Cost my about $900 at Office Max on sale.
More than you want to spend tis true, but it is a damn good color printer.
-Hack
Buy a printer... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.phoenixgarage.org/)
It seems like a lot of people forget that, I know I did until recently. Ink jet printers seem to be a cheap solution - until you realize just how much you are spending on ink.
I own (but no longer use) an Epson Photo Stylus 700, which I bought because I loved the quality of the output when used with the "special" photo paper. I never printer one picture on the paper. I think the greatest thing I *ever* did with the printer was make some nice Thanksgiving party invitations.
It seemed like I was always buying ink - because we rarely used it, but left it turned on. This tended to leave the print heads uncapped (I think they do this on purpose, rather than auto-capping, to sell more ink), and caused the ink to dry out prematurely. But you wanted to leave it on, because it seemed to take forever to "boot" (turn it on, and after minutes of "self-checking" and "cleaning" it would finally be ready. I took a look at how we were printing (rarely, but we wanted good output *now* when we did), what we were printing (most of the time, simple text only stuff, black and white) - and I bought a printer based on that.
I ended up buying a used HP Laserjet 6 (there is a P or something there at the end, too), and a refilled toner cartridge. Total cost: $170.00 - and I have postscript, too. I installed some old 72 pin SIMMs I had lying around to bump the cache up some, and I haven't looked back.
The printer is great - what was really nice was the low page count (25000 pages). I also like the fact that I can use el-cheapo paper in it, and it still looks great (the Epson, on anything under 24lb weight, would "fuzz" - lighter weight paper had more "fur", and the print wouldn't have crisp edges). I also like it that I can leave it on - and then when I want to print out to it, I instantly can - and it just works!
Now, maybe if your job or hobby requires color, an ink jet is what you need to get. But I learned my lesson quick - I don't have *any* need for color. If I want to look at pictures, I look at them on a screen. Just about anyone else can do the same (most people I know have a computer). If I need a print of an image, I will print it in b/w for "checking", then the final can be done at a copy shop or something. I have yet to need to do this, though - but it is the most sensible option, for me.
I will never regret buying that laser printer.
hp color laserjet 8500/8550 (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.loraksus.org/)
I've seen them for sale in stores for $1500ish - they are getting kind of old, and I think HP wants to discontinue the product, but get that and the onsite warranty (you aren't moving this in your car) in case something should happen and you'll have a workhorse machine for $2k.
The printer is also huge, if you need that whole geek factor thing