[PCWorld]

Post your comments for How to Buy a Printer here

[DOTSr]

Also consider whether an inkjet printer's cartridges expire. My HP Photosmart 8250 refused to print at all after one of the color cartridges expired. It offered to continue with just black but then refused to do so. It also mixed color with black (and used up several color cartridges) even though I set it not to. Of course, none of this was mentioned in the sales literature or on the box.

[Premium]

I dont see any mention of software or functions in this article?
I have a Photosmart C7250 All-in-One and the software is a nightmare, followed by a useless scan facility!!
I have spent hours daily for months - back & forth to HP about the software not working , causing multiple errors etc with both XP and Vista - all to little avail. 'Help Agents'?? obviously just copy off tech manual reports from their screens and send the (same) info via email. Although the 'name' remains constant, its obvious that different people do this as the same info just gets repeated in a doom loop - over & over - without the needed fixes to solve the problems!
The scanner - well, as long as you scan to the (unwanted)specs that the machine decides... the long slow process scans unwanted file formats etc. Dont even waste time trying to scan a simple B&W doc as a (small file)jpg...it just wont, choosings its own format and producing a 1/8 Mb file for one page...

Wanted to go back to Epson - my last one was amazingly simple, fast, easy and worked - but the new ones are cheap and nasty thin pliable plastic...

I'm afraid your article doesnt help toward finding a good printer - at all!!

[priceisright1204]

Thanks for the approval of my registration with your Web.

Is there some way of trading in my old Genius flatbed scannner. I am here in Davao City, PHILIPPINES. Please help. Thanks

What advice me on what scanner do I buy whose price will range from 5 thousand up.

[paulmarkarian]

I don't understand why ink or toner costs are not included in printer ranking. When you do the tests you surely should know. You say ink or toner are inexpensive or expensive but that really depends on how well a business or household are doing. I would think that cartridge costs from the manufacturer would be critical in making a good decision on what printer to buy.

[zepper]

Hello PCW,

If duplexing is important to you (often print long documents, etc.) make sure your printer can duplex the papers you use or may want to use. For example, I assumed that the HP Officejet K5400 I got could handle duplexing at least the two main, standard papers used in the US (letter and legal (8.5x14"), but Nooooooooo it doesn't do legal size either manually or with the available duplexing hardware option. Legal paper is the perfect size for printing 4 pages of many .PDF manuals that come with various softwares. All the Canon inkjet printers I've ever had could do duplexing of both sizes manually (flip the stack and through again) or automatically if the unit had the hardware (though most of those with auto duplexing are way too slow for any but very short docs - flip-the-stack is much faster).

PCWorld, on 15 June 2007 - 12:55 PM, said:

Post your comments for How to Buy a Printer here

[zepper]

This one looks like a phishing expedition and doesn't really belong here, but... Old flatbed scanners have little value, trade-in or otherwise. Here in the US, decent new units can be had for under $100. I've never even read about a scanner in the US$5000. range - most are well under US$1000. .

.bh.

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priceisright1204, on 29 September 2009 - 12:41 AM, said:

Thanks for the approval of my registration with your Web.

Is there some way of trading in my old Genius flatbed scannner. I am here in Davao City, PHILIPPINES. Please help. Thanks

What advice me on what scanner do I buy whose price will range from 5 thousand up.

[WickedWisdom]

Having limited success with LightScribe disks, which tend to fade and wear off very quickly, or more often not even be recognized by a LightScribe burner, I am now looking towards the printable CDs, but you failed to even mention them in your listings. While there are only Epson and some HP units that will currently print CDs, that I'm aware of, the demand is getting greater all the time. It would be most helpful if you could give us some advice on the best choice for this use.

[NessBird]

What I don't understand is, why in the name of all that is FUNCTIONAL they don't test printers for DURABILITY?? A lot of these devices work fine -- until the warranty runs out! Am I completely out of date in wanting a machine that will print 100,000 pages before it dies?

[SmilingCarcass]

My advice for buying a printer is steer clear of HP. Horror stories across the internet about software issues- it just doesn't work and I am reduced to third party scanning and photo editing/sorting software.