The price of a printer is also related to the size of print that it can produce. For domestic use printers start from small units that produce 10cm by 15cm prints, the standard photo lab size. Some of these, such as the excellent Epson Picturemate 500, produce stunning prints. But if you want something bigger then you have to choose between A4 and A3 or A3+ machines. (A3+ produces prints 13 inches by 19 inches -- pardon the imperial measurements but that is the way these printers and paper are described.)

Both Canon and Epson produce photo printers in these sizes. Canon printers have a slight edge in sharpness and colour accuracy, Epson printers produce longer lasting prints. All the best inkjet photo printers use a lot of cartridges and they are expensive to run. dpexpert's Canon i9950 printer has 8 individual cartridges and they cost about $22 each in most shops. Replacing any or all of these cartridges really hurts so some restraint is called for in their use.

Generally speaking ink cartridges are cheaper at the computer swap meets advertised every week in the Green Guide. We have seen the Canon units for as little as $16, but even at that price a full set can make the credit card squirm. Third party inks and ink refills have their advocates but dpexpert's experience with these substitutes has been bad. Very bad! We have one totally wrecked printer due to print head clogging. On the basis of this instructive experience our advice is to avoid third party inks even though the price is attractive.

Some years ago we came to the conclusion that the only way to avoid printer-induced bankruptcy was to buy two printers. This may sound mad, but consider this.

Inkjet cartridges are expensive and their capacity is miniscule. If a top quality inkjet is used for everyday printing of documents, letters etc the cartridges, particularly the black, will require frequent replacement. Epson claim that their Stylus Photo 800, an outstanding 8 cartridge printer, will produce 400 pages of 5 per cent coverage from a set of inks. In an ideal world this might be true, but in any case a cartridge replacement set will cost about $144 at current street prices. Compare this with a laser printer, such as the Canon LB3000 which has a street price of about $160 and can produce 2500 pages of 5 per cent coverage from a single toner cartridge. A replacement toner cartridge costs about $120 (so the printer is costing $40!) for the genuine Canon item and considerably less for the “brown box” alternative. In this case we have had no problems with third party toners.

It is obvious that while buying two printers might seem counter intuitive if your aim is to save money this is one time when common sense makes no sense at all. The laser is cheaper and produces better type output on plain paper than the inkjet which is optimised for expensive photo paper. The LB3000 is also a fast printer, much quicker than any inkjet unit.

All printers these days connect via USB so there is no problem in having more than one. Switching between printers is done easily in the software being used whether its Word or Photoshop or Thunderbird.

Our work practice is to reserve the inkjet printer for printing high quality images from digital sources. For the dogsbody, high volume work the little Canon LB3000 is the printer of choice.

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