General
Some people may need a printer for nothing more than a very occasional letter or perhaps draft dumps. Others may need to print multi-part stationery. Most people just want a standard machine that is capable of a variety of tasks including colour printing. The general work-horse these days is the ink-jet printer. I can presume that if you have a specialist printer requirement, you will have a pretty good idea of the sort of printer required to do the task.
Dot matrix
Dot matrix printers are the cheapest to run. They can be left gathering dust for months and still turn out quality prints. If your requirement is to print multi-part stationery they are a must. If your needs are to print a very occasional letter or perhaps drafts of your forthcoming novel onto continuous stationery, these would be a good choice.
The quality of 24 pin dot matrix printers is very good although you can always tell because the characters are not formed as sharply as they are with an ink-jet or laser printer.
A new dot matrix printer is quite an expensive buy. However in a world gone mad with ink-jets, secondhand matrix printers are easily and cheaply obtained through the various auction houses and even as a donation from someone who is updating. Particularly good are the Panasonic KX series and the Star LC models although the latter are quite noisey.
Ink-jets
Ink jet printers offer very good quality, at least when they are working properly! Even the cheapest offer a quality that is likely to please for general use. They are cheap to buy but not to run, with a set of new ink cartridges regularly costing near enough the cost of the printer at the cheap end of the market. One could argue that an ink-jet should be considered a disposable item. However the figures do not work out because the cartridges that are supplied with the printer, are known not to have as much ink as those bought separately.
One 'need' that many people feel they have is that of photographic printing. To my mind such a need rarely exists. If you need true photographic quality you must send the digital files to a photo-processor or take them in to one of the many high street shops that are now offering the service. At well under 20p for reasonably sized prints this service is now comparable to film processing costs. The colour depth and feel of photo-processor prints just cannot be matched with an ink-jet. You need not take my word for it. Just send a few test files for printing then compare the results.
It is appreciably cheaper to have prints made than to do them yourself. If you want to make quality prints you will need to use special photographic ink-jet paper and with some printers, a special photographic cartridge. These make the prints expensive at over 50p per print, and that is assuming that everything is working okay and that you get it right first time! Even a quick print on ordinary paper using the ordinary ink cartridge is unlikely to cost less than it would cost to have them done.
If sending the pictures to a photo-processor, at roughly 1Meg size per digital file, an Internet transfer is probably only practicable if you have a broadband link. Otherwise send the files to your processor via a CD. Consider this - if you do not have a CD burner, you could buy one and its cost could be retrieved with a first order for 50 quality prints! About a holiday's worth?
One final thing - I often supply software that is written in DOS. There are an awful lot of printer drivers that just don't want to know DOS any more. If this is important to your organisation do make sure the printer you decide on works in DOS or make it a condition of sale.
The makers
The three main ink-jet manufacturers, Hewlett Packard (HP), Epson and Canon keep jockeying for top spot. I am not commenting on Lexmark because I do not have any experience of them. I understand that these printers use ink cartridges with integrated ink jets thus ranking them similar in costing to HP printers.
Regardless of printer brand, do keep a set of fresh sealed cartridges so that you can replace an exhausted one as soon as it runs out of ink. Furthermore, if you refill cartridges or use other brand ones, do slot in a proper branded cartridge every four or five replacements. It is amazing how often the manufacturers' cartridges are the best at unclogging jets and correcting streaks.
Epson
The Epson 440/640/740 et al range of printers were pretty impressive. After that series they launched a range of printers that seemed to indicate that they had lost their way. They were distinctly badly finished and with 'strange' ideas such as intelligent cartridges, probably as a means to making sure one uses Epson cartridges only. Their latest printers seem to be an attempt to restore their lead position.
Epson printers are probably the best at printing photographic quality on ordinary paper. They are thus great in say, a school where the need for an immediate display of some activity, which may be up for just a few days, outweighs the quality requirement. After all, with very young ones, a couple of hours delay is history!
Epson cartridges are quite cheap and they are also refillable. Even their 'intelligent' cartidges can be refilled although you will also need a small device that is used to re-set the chip and which is easily available.
The problem with Epson printers is that of clogged jets. If the printer is not in frequent use, the ink can dry up clogging the jets and since these form part of the printer rather than the cartridge, they can be a pig to unclog. The answer then is to use the printer frequently. You should ensure that something is printed both in colour and in black at least a couple of times a week. Keep a spare set of cartridges and replace an empty one immediately.
HP
I have always been hesitant in recommending HP printers. They can give excellent quality prints. However they often suffer from paper handling problems and since the ink jets are incorporated in the cartridge, they are about the most expensive to run.
One particular characteristic of HP seems to be their inability to design a consistent paper feed. Their printers do not like paper re-use. Neither do they like damp paper so you should not consider such printers if your system is in say, a spare bedroom that doesn't often get heated. Eventually many HP printers seem to develop a paper handling problem. This seems to be so common that a quick search on the Internet will show a number of 'kits' from various sources purporting to solve the problem. Indeed probably because of the threat of a class action which is currently being considered, HP themselves are putting out a repair kit for free, for some of their laser printer models - and HP lasers are not cheap!
HP black ink seems to stay wet for a long time! Be careful how you stack sheets after a print run or you may end up with smears. Also with young people it can easily end up on nice white school uniform shirts!
Since the cartidges incorporate the ink jets, cartridges from other manufacturers are invariably recycled. With some of these it is not unusual to find a 'new' cartridge that does not work properly. Refilling them yourself is an option but again, make sure you keep a sealed spare set ready to use.
Given the possible problems of paper transport, the expense and the wet ink, HP printers are my least favourite.
Canon
Canon printers often have very interesting features. The higher end Canon printers give particularly good photo-quality prints but using the proper paper.
Canon have always included at the lower end of the market, a printer that will take A3 paper. This is very useful for say, a small engineering works that needs to print technical drawings for viewing rather than processing. Although the print will lack the precision of a plotted drawing, an ink-jet print represents a considerable saving over plots. Since most drawings are just for viewing, it is an option worthy of serious consideration.
Another Canon feature is that of separate ink tanks. Even quite cheap printers do have this option. Great in say, a school where little Amanda's blue-wash painting is thought to be a 'good idea' by most of the class hence creating a run on the blue ink!
The later ranges of Canon printers do have a cartridge arrangement that would seem to be the best of both worlds. The ink is held in plain tanks with the tanks' receptacle housing the ink jets. Thus it is possible to replace an ink tank, or the receptacle which houses the ink jets, or both. Unfortunately there is a tendency at the lower end of the market to require a receptacle replacement almost as often as the tanks thereby negating any cost savings. On some printers (BJC2000 springs to mind) if you let the colour cartridge empty (because you normally only print in black) there is a possibility that some of the ink jet drivers will burn up. Thus if going for a Canon, make sure you keep fresh sealed cartidges handy for immediate replacement of exhausted ones.
Many of the Canon ink tanks are transparent making them very easy to re-fill. However be careful! They seem to carry more holes than other cartridges so flooding whilst re-filling can be a problem!
In conclusion, at the moment, there is no particular ink-jet printer or manufacturer that one can recommend - only selected models from each manufacturer are worth considering. What particular one you choose is application specific.
Lasers
A laser will give you better and far more consistent quality than an ink-jet. A cheap one is fine and there are various models under 100 pounds. The laser limitation is the lack of colour, or if you do go for a colour laser (expensive), the lack of quality photographic colour - fine for block colour.
For high volume printing the laser printer is much cheaper to run than an ink-jet (but not as cheap as a dot matrix). The following is a rough costing.
Assume a laser printer costs 70 pounds and 45 pounds for an ink-jet. There are cheaper ink-jets but these tend to have higher cost-per-print than the selected price range. Assume the cost-per-print for the laser is 2p per page and 3p per page for the ink-jet. These figures are easily achievable for printers in the price ranges quoted.
Thus we can work out the total cost (including buying the printer) for various print runs.
Then for:-
Pages Ink-jet Laser
2000 105.00 110.00
2400 117.00 118.00
2600 123.00 122.00
2800 129.00 126.00
As you can see the break even quantity against the ink-jet is around 2600 prints. Thus to amortise the laser cost over one year you would need to require about 50 prints per week. To amortise over two years 25 prints per week. After this each print is costing you 2p.
Plotters
Some of my existing customers are in engineering. Traditionally engineering drawings have been plotted rather than printed, hence I have gained some experience in this area. Plotters can be tricky to set up and expensive to run. Unless the plotter is in frequent use pens tend to dry out and the mechanism itself can become 'sticky' thereby offsetting the main advantage of plotters - good accuracy over large sheets of paper.
If you know you need a plotter, you will have a good idea why such a device is essential to your business. However if you just think you need a plotter, consider carefully. In these days of engineering automation, there are a lot of drawings that are transferred between departments and sub-contractors. Often the drawing presented to say, a sub-contractor, carries just enough detail of the section that they will be responsible for. Furthermore a sub-contractor in small engineering parts is unlikely to have the facilities to copy large drawings.
With the above in mind, consider whether you can limit your drawing sizes to A3 maximum. If this is the case a better alternative to a plotter would be an ink-jet printer that handles such a size. This would give the drawings better readability at the expense of some accuracy. Accuracy is usually not an issue - accuracy of content obviously is - unless the drawing itself is going to be part of a reproduction manufacturing process such as may be the case in printed circuit board production. A limited size does mean that the recipient of the drawing is less likely to face reproduction problems. It does also offer cheaper colour printing - although most engineering drawings tend to be monochromatic, it is often useful to be able to separate layers or operations by colour, especially when preparing work for CNC machines.
Canon have traditionally had a low cost printer in their range which will take A3 paper.
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Last modified on 12th July 2006 - Some corrections.