Printer recomendations.
 

My wife has recently started doing some work and needs to print off property particulars : existing printers don't seem to be up to the job when it comes to the photos : new Lexmark Z605 and an older HP inkjet thing. Photos have visible lines across them at any reasonable size (even 7x5" ish)

I say that the printers 'seem' not to be up to the job but I wonder if software tweeking might help - neither of these printers is worth over about £40 so we're resigned to having to cough up for a newer better one.

Any recommendations - print runs might be 150+ pages with 1 or 2 photos per page.
Local print shop quoted £100 for 100 double sided pages - at that price we'd make no profit so running costs are important.

We won't be needing the capability to print eye-popping quality A4 photos but need to print decent quality smaller photos.

I'm guessing that £200 might get us something suitable ?

Canon i865 or Canon i965

The i865 is currently in PC Pro's A list. I have a Canon i950 & it's excellent.

No expert, but "ebay" & "cheap colour laser printer" spring to mind :D

You pay through the nose for consumables but I bet it still would be cheaper than your print shop , and do the job 347 times faster than an inkjet :)

edit, just read this...



Samsung CLP-500The dear departed Douglas Adams once stated that printer manufacturers such as Xerox aren’t in the business of selling printers, but instead they are in the business of selling toner cartridges, which means that they, incidentally, first have to sell you a printer. Well, Samsung illustrates this point nicely with its CLP-500 colour laser printer that retails for less than £500 including VAT. The four starter toner cartridges are rated at 2,000 sheets K and 1,500 sheets for CMY, and then you need to head for the shops and buy a new set of cartridges which will cost you £340 inc VAT. The new toner cartridges are rated 7,000 pages for black and 5,000 pages for CMY but even so, ouch. Hit 50,000 pages of use and you’ll be fitting a new belt transfer unit at £100 and a new OPC drum at £135, raising costs to 7p per page if you do lots of colour printing.



So by my reckoning.....

£340 divided by ( say ) 6000 sheets, works out at 5.6p per page. So you want double sided, flip the pages over :), thats still only 11.2 p per page, or to compare to your print shop 100x0.112 = £11.20 for 100 double sided pages, although not quite as hassle free.

add the cost of the printer...£ 468.61 http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=58616

£468.61 divided by ( say ) 6000 sheets,works out at 7.81p per page. Double sided then say 15.6p. Add this to the cost of your consumables at 11.2p and you are into about 27p per double sided page, icluding the cost of the printer :).

Also remember you get a starter toner kit with the printer thats good for about 2000 prints,but the initial splurge of £468 will get you 1000 double sided prints for 46.8p a chuck.

No allowance for bulk here but your local print shop wants £100 for 100 DS prints [einstein mode] FCUK ME SIDEWAYS ![/einstein mode] thats a pound per print :eek:. Ask him how much for a print run of 1000 ( make sure you are sat down ).



Thats how I'd look at it anyway, either colour laser printing is getting cheaper, or your loacal printer wears a Dick Turpin mask :D

I second the canon. I have the i850 and its excellent

thanks for the recommendations - I'll start surfing now ...