Need advice for which photo printer to buy!

[Darr]

On Saturday, 25 September, 2010 @08:29 zulu, Tim scribed:

> Unfortunately, refilling isn't really an option for some printers.

That site's not really all about refills.

CIS = Continuous Ink System

e.g. http://www.efillink.info/index.php?p=1_188

You can top off the external tanks before they get empty.


> For instance, my old Hewlett Packard had combined ink tanks and

HP's are OK (I've owned a few)... but IMO, their printer business model is 
selling medium-quality printers below cost and making it up on ink.

With my Epson R800 and R1800 (they're shared on my network using a D-Link 
DPR1260 hard wired, not wireless), printing on photo paper, I cannot tell 
the difference between their output and shots from a lab... well, except for 
the price per print... less than a dollar for paper + ink for an 8x10, 
versus $3 at the discount 1-hour photo labs. And that's using the $12 Epson 
carts (yellow, magenta, cyan, black, photo black, red, blue and gloss 
optimizer), not refills or the CIS (I'd like a CIS for them, but don't have 
the need for that volume at this time; the same CIS fits both the R800 and 
R1800). The R800 and R1800 both come with a tray to print photo-quality 
directly on 'white top' CD/DVD discs, FWIW.

I didn't recommend either of those printers to the OP because I usually use 
a windows machine to print from ... not necessarily because of the 
drivers -- the CUPS/Gutenberg drivers seem to have all the same options 
(including the CD/DVD paper-selection) in them as the Epson-provided windows 
interface -- but because I'm not entirely comfortable with GIMP yet. So I 
can't really testify as to how the quality matches up using only fedora.

I have an HP laserjet for B&W document printing, but I've never experimented 
with color lasers on photo paper, so can't attest to their print quality, 
either.