Having recently bought a digital camera I'm looking for a colour printer to print out my snaps. I have a small B&W laser so not too worried about B&W Text Speed or clarity. Its not going to be used a huge amount so ultimate speed/duty cyle not that importnat..but I would like

1) Separate Colour Ink Cartridges
2) Ability to print on good variety of media (normal paper + nice phot paper)

Nice but not essential would be to have a smartmedia slot - so I can print direct from camera. Also nice to have Parallel + USB ports. IR port not that imporant.

Any +ve or -ve experiences with current models up to about £125 ex vat. ?

Ta!

Deano

I've had about 3 now and the best by far is my current HP deskjet 990Cxi

Over a year ago it was 200 quid, so must be cheaper now.

18ppm in black draft
with the right paper, you get photo quality pics.

anyone else agree?

Aaaaarrrghhhh.

Out of approx 15 of the 990cxi, we had to send 7 Back to HP (All ordered seperately , months apart - so not a faulty batch!) because they screw the paper up as it feeds in!

We have every other model of 900's on Site, Never had this problem with any of them .

They are very good printers when they work :rolleyes:

Andy

oh... mine works okay.

They are a very good printer.. I must add!!!

Andy,

HP have a fix for the paper probs on the 990. I should know, I went through three of the buggers before it was sorted. :(

Saying that, best printer I have used. However, I have no idea on costs of ink etc. as I pick up new cartridges from the office ;)

Cheers

Ian

What's the fix.. HP just sent me new ones out, and collected the old ones.

They tried saying I should only use HP Paper :rolleyes:

Agree tho' - very good all round printer !

I've had a 970cxi for ooo, 12 or 18 months (not sure!). No faults at all and I got it for £99 when it was launched as a demo unit *ahem* :D

The new PC Pro has a test of a whole stack of inkjets - the new Canons do well I think.

Andy,

No idea what the fix was exactly, something to do with the roller pickup, but it was a factory fix rather than a field engineer job.

I.e. they redesigned it :)

Cheers

Ian

A little more than you want (about £160), and all in one colour cartridge, BUT... the Epson PhotoStylus 895 is pretty damn good. Excellent photos on photo paper, Smartmedia slot and dare I say it far better quality than an HP... ;)

Can't go wrong with the 900 series of HP really. I have a 950 and folks have a 930. No probs with either, great quality. Also each time you buy a new cartridge you get new print heads so the quality remains great.........

Sharp AJ6010, has all you mentioned above. And is a scanner copier too.

See CSHQ for Norm's super purchase of the "better" model the AJ6110.

Thanks for the comments

Good point about the jets on the HP cartridges. By Dad's cannon just has fixed heads and its possible they'll gum up in time.

Deano

I've just bought a Kodac picture maker (made by lexmark) from pcworld, had it on offer last week £60 instead of usual £70. Prints perfect photo prints and best feature being the computer doesnt have to be switched on as it has a smart card+media slot on top.

Got an Epson Photo 890 the other week, stunning quality even on plain paper.

HP Deskjet 1220C is a little more expensive, but also prints to A3.

Quality on photo paper is quite stunning. Avoid the flimsy photo papers tho - the picture looks OK but the paper 'feels' wrong