jakdedert wrote:

Dave wrote:

snip
Look on the web, there are many thousands of people who feel and share
your pain. Epson ink-jet printers are (or at least were) extremely
prone to clogging. Once the head is clogged, it's often not possible
to get it unclogged. Throw it out and buy another one.

I've found ink-jet printers to be expensive and frustrating. Sure,
they're giving them away with new PC's, but the cost of consumables is
at least 5 times that of laser. And they clog. And they're slow.
And the ink runs when it the prints get wet. What I ended up doing is
buying a color laser printer for my day-to-day stuff, you know, prints
off the web, proofs of docs, etc. I have a print shop do my
high-quality work, they are cheaper than ink-jet prints. I bought a
Brother HL-4040CN color laser and it's worked great for a year now.

I too mostly gave up on inkjets a long time ago. I've resisted buying a
color laser based on the cost of consumables. A full complement of
replacement cartridges cost more than the printer in most cases I've
researched.

I guess there's no middle-ground. Color ink is expensive, too. At
least I had the sense (when I did use them) to find printers with
separate tanks for the various colors. Even then, I consumed more ink
in cleaning cycles than I ever laid on a page. I found when I tried to
dispose of ink carts on eBay that they were worthless, and ate a large
chunk in tossed-out consumables when the last printer I used, died.

snip

I am grateful to have an Alps MD5000 dye-sub printer; it can sit for years
unused and when needed will print in publication-quality. Ink ribbon
cartridges are available for different applications and are handled by an
internal robot. From a web description:

The ability of this machine is only limited by your imagination,
vinyl stickers, waterslide decals, dye sub prints and transfers,
t-shirt transfers, puzzles, mouse pads, coasters, invitations,
greeting cards, scrap booking, there is even a way somewhere on
the internet that tells how to print holograms with some of the
metallic and foil cartridges.

It makes photo prints that rival those from commercial photo finishers.

Best of all, it is _much_ less expensive than a color laser, the consumables
are affordable, and it is far more robust than any inkjet.

I no longer run an inkjet and suggest that other folks think hard before
committing to one also.

Regards,

Michael