# Printer Purchase

## Shining Arcanine

I have two printers, a HP LaserJet 1018 that I use for regular printing and a HP Photosmart C3180 that I use for photo printing. While I believe this combination has reduced my cost of printing supplies, today, I had an unpleasant incident that has made me reconsider things.

I brought my HP Photosmart C3180 on January 21, 2007. At the time, I wanted to get a multiple color cartridge printer because I knew it would lower the cost of ink, but at the time, HP's Vivera models were promising better ink economy and the only HP Vivera model then that had such a feature cost a few hundred dollars, so I went with the then $69 HP Photosmart C3180 under the assumption that it would be the most cost efficient model in the long run. Today, my father who is in real estate, took some pictures of the interior of a home and asked me to print them, so I printed them and the prints came out with lines across them. I tried cleaning the cartridges as they had not been used in a while and redid the prints, but the lines were still there, although not as profound as they were on the previous print-outs. I assumed that the tri-color cartridge needed to be replaced and I had a replacement cartridge I purchased a while back for my printer, so I replaced it and reprinted the photos. The print-outs had a red tint and it turned out there was no blue ink in the brand new tri-color cartridge I had just put into the printer.

In the past, my father would ask me to print photos all the time, but since the housing market has not been doing very well, he has not asked me to print photos for him in more than a year, which meant that the cartridge had been sitting in my room for ages, as I would buy stuff in bulk in order to avoid paying shipping costs. Because of that, the warranty on the print cartridge expired 6 months ago so I doubt HP would replace it, even though it is was caused by some issue at the factory.

My father needs these prints in two days, so I ordered a replacement ink cartridge from Amazon. Thankfully, I have an Amazon Prime subscription, so I should have the cartridge in two days, but I can imagine myself becoming very upset if the replacement that comes is missing a pigment. Since I need the replacement now, I do not have the opportunity to shop around, but I looked at the old places where I used to buy ink cartridges online and it seems that one has went out of business and the others no longer accept their own coupons on OEM inks. This has resulted in the cost of the tri-color cartridge increasing by about $6 from $16 to $22.

I am upset over the current state of affairs and that has caused me to look for a new printer. My digital camera is from Kodak and I happened to notice that their software now has an advertisement that takes me to a webpage that says that I overpay for ink. Unfortunately, Kodak's printers both use tri-color cartridges like my current printer and they official Linux support. I am frustrated over the tri-color cartridge situation in the first place and I want a printer that supports Linux, so Kodak is not a good fit for me. While I am probably a glutton for punishment, I decided to look at HP's current offerings and I found a model that is fairly nice for $140 at amazon.

It costs twice as much as the printer it would replace cost 3 years ago, but it has separate color ink cartridges, which is something I require in a replacement printer. HP has a cheaper model at Amazon that costs about $40 less, but it lacks automatic two-sided printing and wired networking. While it has networking support, it requires 802.11g, which I imagine is a disaster waiting to happen because of interference issues with my home's cordless phone. I doubt I will ever use the double sided printing because of my LaserJet printer, but since I am trying to get away from the network topology where my desktop acts as an always on all-in-one server for my house, the wired ethernet is a welcome feature.

Since I am planning to switch to Linux from Windows, that leaves the question, would this printer support Gentoo Linux in that I could use both its scanner and its printer just as I would use them on Windows? Also, assuming the housing market improves and I am printing several dozen photos for my father each year like in the past, will I really be saving money on ink or am I going to just think that I am without actually seeing any cost savings? For reference purposes, over the past 3 years, I have purchased 15 ink cartridges in addition to the original two that came with the printer, each costing about $15 on average while other people would probably have paid at least $20 each on average because I shopped around and they did not. Lastly, is it really wise for me to go with HP again? I like the quality of print-outs from HP printers and in the past I have always disliked the quality of print-outs from printers from other brands, but is it possible that the situation has changed in the past few years in that I would not need to sacrifice print quality to go with another brand?

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## poly_poly-man

inkjet in general sucks ass.

Some things you should note: in a printer, an ink cartridge should last a while, but those lines are, afaik, caused by the ink thinning in certain parts of the jet. Time for a new cartridge with those.

If your "brand new" cartridge was in its box, it'll last about two years - counting the time in the store. Once out of the box, the cartridge will last something like 14 days before it turns totally unusable.

Laser is by far the better technology, especially for b+w - but I suppose you know that already. A cheap color laserjet (like the cp1215 that I keep seeing on sale) may be good for you.

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## Shining Arcanine

 *poly_poly-man wrote:*   

> inkjet in general sucks ass.
> 
> Some things you should note: in a printer, an ink cartridge should last a while, but those lines are, afaik, caused by the ink thinning in certain parts of the jet. Time for a new cartridge with those.
> 
> If your "brand new" cartridge was in its box, it'll last about two years - counting the time in the store. Once out of the box, the cartridge will last something like 14 days before it turns totally unusable.
> ...

 

The cartridge was in the box for roughly a year and a half.

Anyway I have never heard of a laser printer being used for printing photos. Is it possible to get good quality prints on photo paper with a laser printer? As long as I can get similar quality to the photos produced by CVS back in the days when people used film-based cameras from a laser printer, I am open to any and all suggestions on laser printers I could purchase to replace my HP Photosmart C3180 printer.

Edit: I am now looking at the HP CP1518ni:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16828115140

Does anyone know of any stores that I could visit to see this printer print photos in person? I would like to have some idea of the quality before I commit to buying one because the initial purchase price is very steep.

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