woohoo bought a printer

[AppleQueso]

as minior a celebration as it is, I grabbed a printer today. Cheap $30 canon photo printer, which at first was really frustrating me (blacks would show up as a muted dark grey and it made everything look terrible, until I found out it was a driver issue and worked around it).

Printed a ton of stuff, they all look great, although some of the later prints I did today had really faded looking reds, don't know if it's the ink or the color settings, but I'm betting the former, considering I DID just continue printing stuff until it started running out of ink (to be fair I wasted half the ink on trial and error tests trying to fix my aforementioned grey problem). I'll take pictures of everything when I get around to cutting it out and putting them in cases.

Has anybody else shot through an ink cartridge in one day?

[Ragnarok2103]

about a month back i went through 3 each of color ink and black ink. i had a lot of covers to print, since i hadn't bought cases in a while. it sucks when at the absolute cheapest the ink cartridges are 15 bucks a piece.

[juan0tron]

Yeah any ink cartridge that comes with your printer will run dry pretty quickly. Cased almost all my PS1 games. Too bad theyre so damn expensive though.

[Vt102]

Most Printers come with starter cartriges out of the box.. anywere from 25% to 50% for standard capacity cartriges..

I buy genereic cartriges form my Epson R200 on eBay. I get 14 cartriges for $26.00 (including s&h) vs. $12.99 for 1 cartrige at the store.. A savings of about 85%.

I also by my Color laserjet toner on eBay.. there I save anywere from 50%-60% per cartrige.

[Thaddeus Grey]

I order my high capacity cartriges from Lexmark.com. It comes to about $60 to buy both, but I only have to do it like once every 5 or 6 months. Whenever I decide to pony up and go get all the covers I want mass printed, I think I'll have it done at like Office Depot or Kinko's or something. I might try that eBay thing tho. Sounds nice.

EDIT - Did that eBay bit, and got them for 50% off, genuine. Very nice.

[PDDestro]

What exact make and model printer would you guys think is worth it, for printing covers, that's under $100?

[Vt102]

What exact make and model printer would you guys think is worth it, for printing covers, that's under $100?

Buy a 6 ink photo printer like the Epson A50, HP D5460 or Canon PIXMA..

Whatever you buy.. DO NOT GET A LEXMARK OR BROTHER

[Thaddeus Grey]

Really? My Lexmark has been doing just fine. But I WOULD rather have a 6-ink-er.

[tiktektak]

I recommend Canon as well! I have a pretty old Pixma ip4200 and still the printouts look really good!

Does anyone know which Canon Pixma is the best? I've been thinking about upgrading for a long time now but can't decide which to get. The only thing I know is that I want a real printer only gear no combined printer/scanner/copier/whatthef**kelseitmightbe shit!

[sheep2001]

My Canon ip4600 does the job nicely for me.  Not saying it's the best - but better than my old epson R800

[Sn4tcH]

Can anyone post an example of the scans done with your all-in-ones?

[Thaddeus Grey]

I'm posting a link, because the image is huge. 600 dpi. This is with my Lexmark x3550. There's no descreen option, I have to do that in Photoshop.
http://i965.photobucket.com/albums/ae139/Tim_the_Ninja/8-4-2009122035PM.jpg

Alright, I was looking around at Canon printers and these are the ones that seem to stand out to me:
1. Canon PIXMA MP620 (Print/Scan/Copy)
2. Canon PIXMA iP4600 (Print only)
3. Canon PIXMA MX860 (Print/Scan/Copy/Fax)

I have an All-in-one already, but I'm wondering if I should replace it. Now I don't have a land line in my house, so the fax would be unused. I'm leaning towards the top two already, but for me it's a matter of "is Canon THAT much better?". From the specs of the first two I really couldn't see any differences, other than the included scanner. I do use the scanning and copying features of my Lexmark often, so I would just add the iP4600 to my setup, rather than replace the Lexmark. The MP620 is $99 and the iP4600 is $74. Should I spring for the all in one or just the printer? Do all-in-ones have lower quality prints?