[Tech] Printers

[Nanor]

My dad recently retired and has decided to pursue his hobby of genealogy and general Irish history. Read: pages and pages and pages and pages and pages. He's come to the discovery his Kodak ESP C310 is a massive, massive pile of shite. The print quality is abysmal and cartridge life seems to be literally about 25 pages. I've told him ink jets are a pile of crap and he ought to look into a laser jet as the initial offset will save you a fortune in the long run. He's finally taking my advice on board.

It has to be reasonably priced. He's aware the toner and the printer itself will cost quite a bit but he still doesn't want to fork out a fortune. He'll probably expect to print out somewhere in the region of ten sheets a week in colour. The smaller it is the better, too. Preferably he'd like to have as little proprietary software and driver packages to install as possible, especially one that isn't written by interns in a week. Basically something a retired, casual computer user can operate with little to no maintenance (i.e. little to no ringing me every week).

Have any of you any wisdom to impart? Am I right in saying all ink jets are crap or am I throwing the baby out with the bath water?

EDIT: Scratch the colour, black and white is fine.

 

[Ronin Storm]

Hmm, best home printer that I've bought recently was the Kodak ESP 1.2 (review), though I imagine poor experiences with another in the Kodak line aren't going to make that terribly palatable. Still, thus far it has been very easy to maintain, decent (for the price) print quality, and their proprietary suite is only needed for certain lesser-used things (e.g. scan to file instead of scan and print).

Normally, I'd caution that irregular use of inkjet cartridges radically reduces their life, but printing a few pages every week should mean they're being used fine.

Unfortunately, no laserjet experience to share.

 

[Nanor]

Well he's changed the specification again. It now has to be, quote: "An all-in-one colour printer with separate cartridges that don't interfere with each other". This translates as he wants to be able to copy documents and print them (no, a scanner won't do. No, I don't know why). The separate cartridges bit is understandable. With the current printer you can't print black and white if you don't have any colour ink.

Any ideas?

 

[Panda with issues...]

Well he's changed the specification again. It now has to be, quote: "An all-in-one colour printer with separate cartridges that don't interfere with each other". This translates as he wants to be able to copy documents and print them (no, a scanner won't do. No, I don't know why). The separate cartridges bit is understandable. With the current printer you can't print black and white if you don't have any colour ink.

Any ideas?

Buy him an ipad or equivalent?

I'm serious. Printing all this shit is unnecessary these days. I probably get through 50 pdfs or something a week on a laptop.

 

[Nanor]

Buy him an ipad or equivalent?

I'm serious. Printing all this shit is unnecessary these days. I probably get through 50 pdfs or something a week on a laptop.

Yeah, it would make sense. I'll test the water with his idea but he's part of a history society so he'd prefer hard copies.

 

[Panda with issues...]

Yeah, it would make sense. I'll test the water with his idea but he's part of a history society so he'd prefer hard copies.

If he wants to pass them around and stuff, it may not work if everyone else doesn't have computer access.