As of today, I own a Canon printer.
Ever After full
After several years of decent use, my Epson C86 gave out recently, ending about four years of Epson usage. Reviews on their newest ink system have been pretty poor in comparison to their usual stellar reliability over the last half-decade, which forced me to turn to my fourth and final printer band.
• My first real PC in 1996 came with a crappy 15″ CRT and a Lexmark printer, which sucked as much back then as they do now. Not only are Lexmarks slow ink eaters, but their dependability is more than suspect; when I worked at Best Buy we once had a customer swear theirs just randomly caught on fire, and we all believed him. Yet the fact that Lexmarks suffer from spontaneous combustion isn’t half as bad as their crappy photo printing, high ink tank costs and poor ink usage.
• HPs are tolerable. I paid $400 for one of their workhorses back around 1999, and it still works to this day – it’s just not up to par with the print quality of current printers. That and the 75/45 ink combo requires a fourth mortgage (although similarly priced Lexmark cartridges usually give me far less ink.)
The biggest issues include higher paper and ink cost (their cheaper ink cartridges have quite little ink,) as well as sub-quality prints. Often gear tracks can be found on photos, and borderless printing has always been a mythical joke.
• I went to work as an Epson rep for a few months in the summer of ‘04 because their printers were (and still are, save the ink cost) the best. Their photo quality was amazing, the text on their non-photo line was beyond crisp, and the ink cost was reasonable, even better than Canon. I got eight billion free cartridges as a rep and bought my mother an R200 photo printer for $99 that still works today (haven’t bought any ink in almost three years since it uses the six individual cartridges conservatively, and we had a cache of them from my time with the company) and got myself a C86 to replace my C82 since it also used the ink that I got for free. Now, as I finally run out of ink, the printer decides that the heads are clogged and printing is no.
Strangers with Candy psp • I’ve always liked Canon but never owned one. They seem to get a jump on Epson every year, briefly beating the leader in cost and quality only to see Epson come out with something that blows their competition out of the way. This time I think the Red Box has the advantage, though, as Epson’s current #76 ink line is almost Lexmark-like in its usage, prompting me to buy a Canon MP600 multifunction (since my scanner is on its last legs.)
It’s only a four-inker, but that’s the one area Canon excels in. While nothing – NOTHING – can produce the quality that a six-ink Epson photo printer can, Canon’s four-ink system has always been the closest (in fact, you can rarely tell the difference between their four and their six-ink lines.) Since I rarely print photos, it should be perfect.
Especially for $160.
So now I’ve owned printers from all four companies, prompting this reminder:
Unless it’s a laser, NEVER BUY A LEXMARK.
