Printer

hillbloom

I need a PRINTER for home use only, which uses not so expensive ink. Ink prices can vary. Can any boardie recommend!!

BorneTobyWilde

Can get ink cheap on Ebay uk
Canon printers give random trouble, 1403 error .

HP DeskJet 3630 would be a standard decent all in one printer

Xterminator

Hi Op

years of expereince here, mainly from work but home as well.

HP were the printer of choice for years in my workplace, but it wasn't because they were better it was because they were a known quantity. Reliable, fixable but also one time years ago someone bought a non hp printer and couldn't get an ancient version of unix to print to it. however we relaxed that rule and i cannot say i noticed any great difference in reliability across similarly priced machine of canon and HP. I cannot say the same of lexmark, we had issues on those. I don't believe for one minute there is a gulf in quality between canons and HPs, ( lexmarks? not sure) i think if someone has a bad expereince they like the previous poster say avoid this make. Probably similar to cars its more about personal preference and bad expereince as opposed to empirical evidence. Certainly some of the canon MFCs seem to be very good printers.

You average inkjet prints reasonable quality prints and the printer is often sold at cost or less to get you hooked. However i have found if you use compatible inks the quality of print suffers noticeably. So if you plan to use a printer and buy original ink, id recommend buying whatever is on special offer in argos/pc world at the time, and probably an all in one for the couple of times you will need to scan.

if you plan to print more than the odd homework assignment & photos, you start to get into the economics of cost of ink, vs laser, etc. The better inkjets have separate ink cartridges so you need only dump the yellow when its gone. the cheaper home models have an all in one colour cart and once one of the colours is dry you dump the whole thing.

hillbloom

Thanks Xterminator for all the info. Very useful. The HP that has stopped working needed the 2 cartridges. When the black goes dry, I had to replace the 2. It always seemed to be the Black that goes first. For all the use I gave it, I am a bit disappointed with the HP.

Firblog

Pick up Canon MG3650 in Tesco for 35 euro at the min, Ink isn't the cheapest out there - roughly 500 pages for 20euro but they are very reliable, wireless and are airprint enabled.