Both my very old Canon LBP 660 Laser printer and Epson Ink Jet Color 680 are on their last legs. I'm thinking of dumping both printers and replacing them with a colour laser now that they've come down in price so much. However I do print quite a few photos on the ink jet. Has anyone got experience of using a colour laser for photo printing? Can I expect reasonable results or would I be better off buying a new B/W laser printer and Ink Jet? I'd appreciate any comments.

Just buy a hi end Inkjet printer.

Colour laser printers are useless for photo quality and are fixed at usually 600dpi resolution, you cant use special "glossy" paper in laserjets either due to high temps. plus, toners, of which there are 4 -

Been using HP 2500L (

If you want true quality photo output, I would recommend a dye sublimation printer which will print proper photo-quality photos and get a black and white laser for everything else....

Otherwise go for an inkjet and budget for some glossy photo-paper

See here for some reviews

Chris

Thanks for comments. I think I will stick to a new B/W laser printer and new Ink Jet. I'm in the process of costing out consumables. You can only obtain the manufacturers own cartridges for some of the newer ink jets at ridiculous prices. Another interesting point is that it is now cheaper to buy a new B/W laser printer than to replace the toner on my old Canon laser!

I'm in the process of costing out consumables. You can only obtain the manufacturers own cartridges for some of the newer ink jets at ridiculous prices.

This is why I recommend Epson - look out for Jettec cartridges, as they're made on the same production line as Epson's (so are the same), but they fill them up with more ink and they cost significantly less.

Been playing with a new Epson C66 lately, and it's a really nice bit of kit. Firstly you get the 4 separate cartridges rather than a colour and a black, so that if you use more of one colour than the others then you just replace that one cartridge.

It also works on both USB or parallel - which is very useful.

Then there's the print quality...stunningly good.

And all from a

This is why I recommend Epson

Only problem I found with the Epson that I owned a couple of years ago, was that if you didn't use it every other day, the heads would dry out and you'd need to replace them anyway.... this may have been fixed in the newer ones as technology has probably come along way since then

Chris

Doesn't seem to be a problem on the newer ones...

Rob.

Rob.. these Epson printers.. whats driver support like? and can you give some example cartrige prices?.

Ive got to look into replacement inkjet printers for the branches @ work. theres only so many times you can douse the rollers of a deskjet 610 in belt dressing to make them work and most are way past that!!

my main prerequisites..... has to have reliable basic NT4 support (that will work on a highly restricted policy) and a parallel port.

I'm debating getting a new printer. At the moment we have one of those HP HPSC500 ,or something like that, all in one scanner, printer copiers.

Thinking about seperate scanner and printer.

i wonder who sells these cartridges?

my main prerequisites..... has to have reliable basic NT4 support (that will work on a highly restricted policy) and a parallel port.

Not sure on NT4 support...the drivers are for 98/ME/XP/2000. Mind you, I don't see there'd be much difference for printer drivers between NT and 2K, but then I don't really do much with NT4 these days!

Not sure of the C66 cartridge prices off the top of my head, but I could point you in the direction of a Jettec distributer...

Rob.

not sure i would be trying to use any usb printer with nt4.....

not sure i would be trying to use any usb printer with nt4.....

The parallel port should be fairly generic though, shouldn't it?

Rob.

You can get some software that lets you run usb on NT4 but I can't remember what it's called.

Somethings work with it others don't - I downloaded it from th enet and got a crack for it.

The parallel port should be fairly generic though' date=' shouldn't it?

Rob.[/quote']

if c66's had one then it would be im sure....

The parallel port should be fairly generic though' date=' shouldn't it?

Rob.[/quote']

Suprisingly few modern cheap printers come with parallel ports these days :(

if c66's had one then it would be im sure....

That one you sold me had one! :eek:

Rob.

If it's any use I used to buy cartridges for my old Epson printer from http://www.choicestationery.com/

An excellent firm with very good prices.

Can't really comment on modern laser printers but as for ink jets, I have experience of 3 of the 4 main makes, HP, Lexmark and Epson. I would rate them in that order. Epson printers are very poorly built with very mediorce print quality. Lexmark are fantastic print quality but the cartridges are expensive. All in all I would go for a HP.