Way OT: Printer Advise...

[Brett]

Ok... I know this is WAY OT, but I trust this forums advise, so I was hoping a few of you could help me with, umm, a situation I am having...

My 4-year-old HP printer decided yesterday was the last day it would print, so it said farewell, and well just plain quit, or ran out of ink, I am not quite 100% sure. Eitherway, its time to upgrade.

So the demands for my new printer are as such:
I am looking for a photo printer, that is real quick for standard text documents.
I am willingly to spend up $350.00 if I think the price justifies the cost.
I would prefer it could hold 300 pages in the tray, but would settle with less.

Currently, I am looking at Canon IP5000 and IP8500, but am open to suggestions.

Finally, I have read about PICTBRIDGE for cameras, and this sounds awesome, my only question is all priinters/cameras alike or do some implement more/less features than others using the PICTBRIDGE standard.

Nevertheless, if you can provide advise or a link to where I can get some credible advise it would be much appericated.

Thanks guys,
-Brett

[noodleNT]

I just bought an HP 2510 a few months back and LOVE it. It is networkable, wired OR wireless. Which means you can put it anywhere! The scanner isn't bad on it. If you fax alot though you might not like it if your doing pre-printed pages because you have to do a page at a time. The printer comes with a built in flash media readers, it can read them all, which makes it very usefull to print out pictures. I do however find that the map drive the card reader adds to your PC a little slow.... ok very slow. They did however release an update to the reader the other night that might speed it up.

All and all it is a great printer, and it can be found on the net in your price range. Check it out!

[flavius]

Epson Stylus Photo R300. It can print DVD's, CD's that are printable. For all hardware related questions I usually go to http://www.tomshardware.com first.

[Brett]

All good advise. I am not sure I need the scanner features as much as the photo features though. I actually did look at 300R as well, I believe my hangup with that printer was that it was nearly a year old, and was afraid it was about to be replaced.

I have visited toms before, but never thought about going for just printers, I may check that out as well...

Any more suggestions,
-Brett

[merrypig]

I almost bought a printer that could print direct to dvd/cd's - but held off as the printable media really was not that prevalent. I didn't want to order on line everytime I ran out. IT just wasn't worth the price premium on them when I could get regular dvd's that sold in volume from down the street.

On the whole though I love epson photo print quality. I loved in 5 years ago, and it's gotten better ever since. HP printers look ok until you compare them with epson imho. All the HP printers I have used however have died from mechanical failure of some sort so I refuse to buy them now. (Even the corporate laserjets seem to get more maintenance calls than the lexmark or epsons).

I have had an epson c80 and an epson c60 recently. The c60 has been faithful so far, I do a chunk of colour printing for dvd case inserts. The ink holds up good and I prefer printers with individual colour cartridges so I only have to replace what I need. They do gouge you on the price of ink cartridges tho - but all companies do that lately.

[Zogg]

I recently went thru this exercise but was looking for an all-around printer rather than one skewed to photos. I bought the Canon i860 because the price was right ($100) and all the reviews of it were excellent. It is very good at both regular printing and photos, but won't be the absolute best photo printer.

So far I am extremely pleased, the print quality is amazing even on plain paper and it is totally quiet. I was replacing an ancient Epson Stylus Color 600 that was VERY noisy, and a lot of the reviews for Epson printers mention that they are noisy.

I'd definitely recommend one of the Canons, but be sure and read a lot of reviews. If you can find 4 or 5 review sites and they and the users all give the printer good marks, go for it.

Z