Help Me Choose A Printer!

[BQuicksilver]

Alright guys, my hp deskjet 920c has just grown a little long in the tooth and lacks some important features I want. What do you recommend for me as the best inkjet printer?

Here's what I need in a new printer (in order of priority):

1) Ability to print printable DVD-R's (and please share your experience with this!)

2) Ability to Print 10.8 inches of an 11 inch sheet of paper (my old HP only did 10.5, and I'm always resizing/shrinking covers)

3) Cheap 'Refurb' Ink Cartriges. HP ink is still far pricier than most other brands off the big EBay refurb market. Mine are about $12/cart while my friend's Cannon is $4/cart. I'd also like to hear from Epson owners about how cheap they can get decent ink and the other little quirks.

4) Good ink management software. I don't want the printer telling me that it's out of ink with half a tank left. I also don't want the printer's last 5 prints to be sort of good...it should print well right up to the second the ink is out. I've even hear that Epson printers lock you out (disable further printing) well before the ink is truly dry...is that true?

5) Excellent print quality. I don't care about dpi, as the most I will typically ever use is 300-600dpi. What I DO want is good print reproduction. I think you guys know what I mean...who really uses 4800dpi? (or whatever printers have these days)

6) A good feeder. My old HP always wanted to grab several sheets when I fed it heavy gloss paper. It was okay with regular paper, but I should never have to hand feed the printer to avoid jams.

7) One that rarely locks up or "acts funny". The HP just had too many odd episodes where it kept running paper though it printing garbage after trying to halt a print.

8) Quick text print rates. I print lots of medical documents before work and need to grab them as I walk out the door. On the other hand, I could care less about how quickly photos print (I just want a good job there). An excellent 2 sided print system would also be nice.

9) Ability to print 11x17 paper. It'd be nice to have for wall decoration/projects.

I'd love to hear what you recommend (and why) in the context of my above requests.

[Eldorado]

I would say your looking for the Epson R300

I bought one a few months ago and love it! Decent price for the features, prints on Ink Jet printable discs with a front loading tray (which I have actually had troubles with occasionally and need to reload tray), borderless printing, check out all the tech specs at their home page

Personally my printouts have been the best I've had come out of any printer I've owned, very good quality! The monitor software also works well, shows the levels in each cartridge, and doesn't bug you until it hits the very low zone.. and I've had it print until the cartridge was dry!

One thing that's a problem with it is cartridge replacements, I refill my cartridges but it's not as nice and easy as say a Canon where the cartridges are clear and you can visibly see how much you have. Epson also uses the chip on them to track how much ink has been used, and you need a reset gadget to reset the chip to make it read full again after you've refilled. Haven't seen any cheap cartridges yet, I guess it's still pretty new for that..

[BQuicksilver]

ElDorado, that is definitely my #1 choice right now. thanks for the info!

1) Can you give me any more feedback on the DVD/CD printing quality, and quirks assiciated with it. Does it print to the edge? Do the printed DVD's play as well? (I had playback issues with Stomper-labeled DVD's)

2) Borderless prints sound perfect, but the factor specs say it'll do only 8x10. Can you conirm that it'll print 10.8"+ of an 11" sheet?

3) How tough is it to refill the cartriges? Do the refilled ones work as well? How do you get the tool to reset the cartriges?

4) So does it print well until it goes dry? ....Or does it slowly fade to badprints as the ink runs out?

5) I assume the print quality is amazing, just like most Epsons.

6) Any feeder issues outside of the CD/DVD's? Can you expand on what the problem is with DVD/CD feeding?

7) No lock-ups or other stange behavoir?

Thanks in advance for a reply!

[Eldorado]

Lots of Q's, here ya go:

1. CD disc print quality is excellent, of course it does depend on the quality of the print surface your using. I've tried 2 types of discs so far, Ritek and a Generic brand. Ritek by far looks nicer, rich, deep colors! Blacks have been spot on! The Disc printing software that comes with it is also very good, you can specify in Milimeters the print size of the disc (inner and outer). They supply a small cardboard cd size cutout that you can use to test the print. For me it took a couple tries until I got the sizing perfected to the discs (was 42mm inner diameter, 116mm outer for almost all discs - 22mm inner diameter for print-to-hub discs)

Oh, and never a playback issue

2. Yep, it does borderless printing.. I use CoverXP for printing DVD covers, and I can adjust it to print the complete cover on regular legal letter sized paper. There's also an option in the printer setup to click on for borderless printing, but I think this option is only valid when using certain types of media (photo paper probably)

3. Not too tough to refill, only thing about it is you don't know when your nearing the top, or what the condition of the sponge in the cartridge is (starting to dry up or not). So I overfill all the time, then suck some back out. Again, the quality depends on the inks you buy, there's probably some cheapy ink refills you can get, and then there are better ones. But mine have come out great, don't notice a difference between the original inks. Only thing I don't like about refilling these is that the refill hole is on the bottom of the cartridge and can't be plugged like most, I have to use some glue to seal the hole again (canon cartrdiges the hole is on the top, and then can be plugged with a little plastic stopper) The gadgets to reset the chips can be bought almost everywhere on the net, do a search for some ink refill kits and you'll find that almost every shop carries it. I'll get the name of the site I got my ink + gadget from if you want. The resetter was $20/us

4. Seems to me to print fine, no changes until it's done.

5. Yep, everything I've printed out looks tons better than my previous Canon, HP's..

6. No paper feed issues, the cd tray is awkward sometimes. You have to line up points on the cd tray to points on the printer loader. For some unknown reasons I've had it spit the tray back out and saying to reload it. Dunno why, does this on the odd occasion.

7. Nothin strange happenin otherwise! Runs sweet and quiet!

[BQuicksilver]

Wow, big thanks El Dorado. I really appreciate your time on this one.

It's between the Epson R300 and New Canon i865 right now.

[Eldorado]

Oh Canon has one out now? Damn.. I woulda preferred them just because of the cartridges. Assuming that they are the nice clear ones that are easily refilled!

I noticed Epson has a lower level printer out now, same as R300 but minus the ability to print without a computer, I think it's the R200 and is $100 cheaper than the R300

[BQuicksilver]

Actually, it looks like the Canon will not be out until later this year. But it IS coming.:cool: