Printers

You can get covers for the cartridges to stop them drying. You have to remove the cartridges and store them away from the printer. Places which refill cartridges tend to have the covers, at least our local refill shop does.

My HP all in one is a few years old now, but it still turns out great prints, and has special photo inks, also for b/w.

I don't print photos that often either - cheaper to get them done normally.

I've not used compatible inks but now the printer is over a year old I thought I might go down that road. I suppose it would be cheaper to have them printed by the "club printer" or send them away but I don't have the confidence that the file I'd be sending would turn out "right"

Thanks John and Al for info on print life.

The printer I have att is a 10 year old Canon MP600.

What I would look at when buying a new printer is the cost of the inks. My Canon had chipped ink cartridges which were expensive and made it harder to get 3rd party inks when it first came out. When printing photos a lot of ink is used and your expenditure on inks can soon exceed the cost of the printer. I think some manufacters deliberate sell printers cheaper knowing they can recoup the cost on ink sales.

Regards

Jeff

Stan, I've said on here previously that I use DSCL. They charge just over a quid for a 16x12 and the B&W's are good too.

First lot of prints I sent them came back too dark. I adjusted my screen so that the displayed images looked like those dark prints. Had many prints off them since and they all come back fine. Good enough for club competitions. They'll auto correct for you if you like

Many inkjets left on standby will perform a cleaning cycle once a week. The ink will of course eventually then still run out.

Running a cartridge dry will cause damage that even careful fluid cleaning and cleaning cycles can not recover from.
Modern Canon's carefully park their print heads when a job is finished.

My MG6250 handbook says you must run the printer once a month to avoid issues. I think that such lack of use is the source of most problems. Mine gets enough non specifically photo use (proofing DTP etc) to avoid such issues.

Finally I think cheap laser 80gsm paper for day to day text printing causes dust that can also be a culprit. I always use 90gsm plain paper.

I've not seen a laser for home use up to photos yet.