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All right, I think my Epson 980 is starting to show its age. The black print head can't seem to produce a straight, vertical line. Every other text line has smeared ink, as if the print head lost control at that point. The result is smeary text.

Overall though, I'm pretty satisfied with Epson, especially since I do a lot of amateur print media work (some professional, too). I can't blame the actual printer; I've opened it up, and it's taken its share of abuse. So, I was thinking I'd give it to my parents in case they ever wanted to print a photo or something, because it's still exceedingly good at that.

I think I'm going to go for a new printer, as in not used. I need it to print papers with laser-quality text, something that Epson printers of the 980 generation were not known for; at CompUSA, we used to tell people "HP for documents, Epson for photos," though I've seen some output from modern Epson printers, and it looks pretty excellent. I also need it to do as good a job as or better then my 980 with color documents, photos printed on photo paper from a 300 dpi Photoshop source image. Network capability is unneeded, but nice I guess. It also needs to be cheap, $200 or under. Though, if it's a stellar printer, I might drop $250. I was looking at the Epson 825 as a solution.

I'd appreciate any input. Thanks.

Are you interested in printers that accept digital camera Compact Flash/Smart Media cards? I hear Canon has the CD-300, Olympus has the P-400.

Edit: Whoops, these printers are expensive! Maybe you can get one used?

generator_g1 wrote:Are you interested in printers that accept digital camera Compact Flash/Smart Media cards? I hear Canon has the CD-300, Olympus has the P-400.

Edit: Whoops, these printers are expensive! Maybe you can get one used?

No. I don't need a printer to accept input from Flash cards. Any digital photo I intend to print is going to go through a battery of color correction before it's even proofed.

for inkjets, might I recommend the Canon i950 or 9100 (if you need bigger prints). I will likely get the 9100 once the epson 3000 I currently have dies (or once I can no longer get cartridges for it -- $55US per color... DAMN! )

the P400 is a great dyesub for the price (i use one to print onsite at events alongside sony UPDs)... onlyreal weaknesses are the paper feed, as it is a dust magnet, and the fact that it doesnt do true 8x10... more like 7.6x10

The i950 looks all right, but it's $250, which is a lot. Either the Epson C82 or 825 will probably do. I can't decide between the two of them because the C82 uses 3-color ink, but you load colors separately (money saver), and the 825 uses 6-color, but loads them all in one cartridge. Now, I've gotten some damn nice results with my 980 (after some intense color calibration sessions), and it uses 3-color inks. How much of a difference does 6-color ink make? Enough to justify the extra $30?

EDIT: Just looked at the C82 and decided to screw that. Its inks aren't really suitable for photo output. I might consider the i950 ... how is its text output?

Whatever you have is better than what I have. GUARANTEED.

Durandal wrote: Just looked at the C82 and decided to screw that. Its inks aren't really suitable for photo output. I might consider the i950 ... how is its text output?

definitely screw the c80 series... for photos you dont want anything that uses less than 4 separate colors (CMYK). AFA the text on the i950 goes, I think it's pretty good -- I take it you mean the typical, plain black text...

if you dont want to shell out the $250, there are always the i650, 750 & 850... they arent as fast as the 950 AFAIK, but put out the same level of quality for le$$... the 850 (and I think the 750 as well) use the same inks as the 950 too.

Shaka[Zulu] wrote:definitely screw the c80 series... for photos you dont want anything that uses less than 4 separate colors (CMYK). AFA the text on the i950 goes, I think it's pretty good -- I take it you mean the typical, plain black text...

Yes, just your standard PDF or Word document printing.

if you dont want to shell out the $250, there are always the i650, 750 & 850... they arent as fast as the 950 AFAIK, but put out the same level of quality for le$$... the 850 (and I think the 750 as well) use the same inks as the 950 too.

Hm ... so the only difference between the 850 and 950 is speed? I really don't care about speed; I'm a patient man. If the output is good, I've got a few minutes to spare.

Buy an inkjet suggested here or on Ars, then slowly save up for a color laser

Or if you can find a working one, the HP LaserJet IIs and IIIs are highly reliable... just watch out for power surges, which can blow the fuser unit (the most expensive component).

We picked up a HP LaserJet IIP+ (the small, personal model) from a local thrift shop for about $10. It had some problems with streaking text, but that was fixed by getting a new toner cartridge.

Crayz9000 wrote:Or if you can find a working one, the HP LaserJet IIs and IIIs are highly reliable... just watch out for power surges, which can blow the fuser unit (the most expensive component).

We picked up a HP LaserJet IIP+ (the small, personal model) from a local thrift shop for about $10. It had some problems with streaking text, but that was fixed by getting a new toner cartridge.

Holy crap, good find! I'll have to look around for one, as I hate inkjet printers.

Dalton wrote:

Crayz9000 wrote:Or if you can find a working one, the HP LaserJet IIs and IIIs are highly reliable... just watch out for power surges, which can blow the fuser unit (the most expensive component).

We picked up a HP LaserJet IIP+ (the small, personal model) from a local thrift shop for about $10. It had some problems with streaking text, but that was fixed by getting a new toner cartridge.

Holy crap, good find! I'll have to look around for one, as I hate inkjet printers.

Better than a bubblejet, yes?

indeed... lasers are very good. fast too. but if you wanna do photo-quality images with one, be prepped to spend big buck$ for a fuji pictograph.

I should probably mention that this printer must be USB and work with Mac OS X. Though I'm sure the lasers you've mentioned are network capable.

The IIs and IIIs aren't network capable, but you can hook them up to a *nix box and use CUPS or Samba or something.

Would a LaserWriter II or LaserWriter III work? They're the same as the PC versions, just with a Mac interface...

OS X has CUPS, so all it'd really need is an ethernet interface. The problem is that I only have one ethernet jack.

Well, in terms of complexity and time spent I think this goes far beyond the original measure, but it's probably not as expensive when you add everything up. Here goes nothing...

Things to get:
1. A small Ethernet hub and a couple of patch cables (estimated cost: $20)
2. Some old Pentium I computer with two network cards
3. Copy of Linux, Mandrake works fine (download: free)
4. LaserJet II or III

Hook LaserJet up to Pentium I, connect Mac to P1 via Ethernet hub. Connect the other network connection to the P1. Install Linux with NAT and firewalling enabled and CUPS installed.

Then from OS X, search for the CUPS server that is your Linux box and set that one as your default printer.