[Gllug] Looking for a printer recommendation

[Tethys]

Richard Jones writes:

>Now I have no real idea about printers.  Inkjets are slow and
>expensive to run.  Does this afflict all makes of inkjet?  Last time I
>looked seriously at laser printers they all cost thousands of pounds
>and couldn't print in colour - well, that was 20 years ago.  I had a
>quick look on Google, and it looks like colour laser printers are a
>little bit cheaper now.  Are there any which are cheap to run, even if
>expensive to buy?  And not made by companies like HP which like to
>advertise how many patent monopolies they've been granted?

Question: How much do you really need to print in colour? I will
nearly always recommend a mono laser when people ask about printers,
because it's very rare for people to need to print in colour, and the
print speed and quality are just so much better. In particular, the
low end Lexmarks are great little printers. I have an Optra E312 which
is now discontinued, but the replacement E330 should do fine. If you
can live with PCL only, then the E323 is cheaper, but for me it's
worth paying the extra to get native PostScript.

If you want a colour printer, you probably still can't afford a laser,
and if you can, you won't be pleased with the results. You won't
do better than an Epson inkjet for colour[1] -- say a Stylus Photo
R200. The machine is very cheap, but *all* inkjets that I've come
across cost a fortune to run. Unless you absolutely demand instant
gratification for your colour printing, you're better off taking it to
a print shop on CD and get them to do it instead. It's actually very
cheap nowadays.

Tet

[1] Make sure it's one of the 6-colour photo models for best quality.
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