Printers (1 Viewer)

Hi there

I bought a HP ink jet printer, and I have had it for a year and a half. It is an all in one coloured printer. Scanner, printer and photocopier. The black cartridge refuses to work now. We have bought more than one cartridge to test if it was not the cartridge that is faulty. It is not - sadly.

We can get prints off Word documents, but we need to set the text colour nearest to black as possible (dark blue)

This alignment fault is unrepairable, (I went through all the test sheets and clean up procedures that I could here). Our service man said it would be worth us getting a new one. Our warranty is out so we cannot go down that route anymore.

Anyone had experience of good quality ink jet printers, and could you advise me here what is the best way to go. I have always trusted HP, but I am beginning to wonder here?

Long to download pictures here, (digital camera has been bought, and we are still waiting to use it).

The sooner we get ourselves sorted the better now.

Thanks.

Regards
Kathy

This may help;

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=101283

I've had my Canon for a few weeks now and it's superb.

hi Dave

Thank you for your information, and the thread. What you have bought has been a good purchase, and worth looking into.

I will consult my OH, Dave (too) and see what he thinks of it. We have agreed to see what people have to say about printers on BF/TS and draw our conclusions from what we read. I still like HP though that is the trouble at the moment.

Then it will help us see what is best for us to buy.

Regards
Kathy

I had the same trouble with my all singing-all dancing HP printer, Kathy, which came 'free' with my computer system. I returned many black ink cartridges to the suppliers thinking they were faulty and after about the 4th time put the blame on the printer. When I was typing Word docs I had to ask it to print in a colour - usually the darkest I could find - but soon got fed up with this. I binned the print and got a bog standard laser printer black & white one - think it's a Samsung. We're getting on fine.

Hope you're soon sorted.

Sandra

Unfortunately it seems the printer industry has become a throw away industry. I am using a several year old HP 970 Cse and quite happy with it and the fact I can print with the Vivera photo inks is a plus. So far I have resisted the all in one printer as I have a separate scanner of equal or older age. But my day is coming when I will have to face the music. Every thing I read says there is no perfect printer and each has it woes. I think that the higher end models do tend to last longer and a extended service warranty might just be the ticket. I will probably go for another HP or maybe Canon when the time comes.

I have had an Epson Sylus Photo R800 printer. It has been great. From printing photos to include in competitions at the local photo club, to many copies of a 100 page masters dissertation. Can't fault it other than it takes 8 cartridges at about £10 each :eek!: although I have started buying the cartridges from 7dayshop in Guernsey :t:. This printer, and its A3 counterparts, have been winning awards for photo quality for some time.

Another vote for the R800.
For photo work it works best with the right Epson paper and ink.
It hasn't yet shown any sign of jet clogging that could be a bit of a 'feature' of its predecessors, however, having run many generations of Epson Photo Printers, the only one that failed in warranty many years ago was replaced by Epson driving out and swapping it for me. Fortunately no recent need for finding out if they are still as helpful!
It has just finished producing a run of about 50 Christmas cards designed using Serif PagePlus software using recent photos for a bird theme and also a number of calendars - not cheap - but beautiful quality for those who will appreciate them.
To be fair HP printers seem to be very good too but I can't be bothered to learn how to get the best out of a different manufacturers system.

This is how i choose on what printer I should use. I have HP, Canon and Epson. I use those case by case. Usally for photos, I use Epson's PX5000. But for printing the top surface of the CD or DVD, usa Canon's i950. For paper works any HP printer would work.

My vote goes to Epsom. For documents, I'm still using colour stylus 600 that we got bundled with our first home computer in 1995 - never any problems.
For photos I use a 2100 - sadly discontinued now, but again, it has done 4 years of trouble-free service so far, and looks set to continue.
It really depends what you are after - if it is mainly documents and text, or if photo quality images are a major output. If the latter, spend some money on a specialist printer, rather than an office standard machine.

I have an Epson R800, which is excellent, though pricey on cartridges.(I also buy my Epson cartridges from 7dayshop). For A3 I have an old Epson Stylus Photo 1290, which I picked up at our village church fete for £5. and which still produces very good quality prints. My surprise package is an Epson Stylus DX7000X. This is an all singing dancing machine, which I primarily bought because of its Fax facility. However, it produces remarkably good colour prints, and I am now using it as my everyday printer. For letters etc I use a black and white Lexmark laser printer.