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February 23, 2004

New Printer

We purchased a Canon i860 printer over the weekend. We have a Brother HL-760+ laser that's been a good performer for many years, but we've been wanting to do some color printing. Mainly color graphics, but also some photo printing. We narrowed it down to the HP Deskjet 5650 and the i860. The Canon won because of several things:

  • Five separate ink cartridges, as opposed to two on the Deskjet. At Circuit City the replacement HP tri-color cartridge (17ml of ink total) is $35. Each of the three Canon color inks (13ml each) are $12. How the Canon should have cheaper ink costs in the long run is left as an exercise to the reader. ;)
  • A straighter paper path; the Deskjet is more ergonomic but has a 180° turn.
  • A separate photo-paper feeder.

I've just started using it, but the setup was very easy. The first photo I printed on the complimentary 4x6 photo paper looks amazing. If I encounter any problems with the printer or its software I'll post about them. At this point it looks pretty solid.

Posted by Alex Harden on February 23, 2004 10:28 AM |

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Comments

Sounds like a good deal. I bought a multifunction
for my wife's business not too long ago. It's nice to have a copier/OCR and be able to scan in things(I didn't have a scanner).
It was the Lexmark 6150. Got it at Circuit City as well.

Hope the printer works out well for you... did they talk you into an extended warranty??

Posted by: Shane | February 23, 2004 11:02 AM

No, didn't purchase the extended warranty. I usually don't. What was funny is that the cashier asked about the extended warranty, but not if I wanted/needed a parallel or USB cable (not included with the printer), or extra ink or paper.

I knew the printer didn't come with a cable, so I borrowed my scanner's USB cable temporarily. I ordered the USB cable Circuit City wants $30 for from Newegg for $10.99. It's amazing how many stores still mark up cables like that so darn high.

Posted by: aharden | February 23, 2004 11:48 AM

Yes, I actually got nailed on that. I bought one for $25 or so. When I got home I found that I already had two from old devices I no longer use!!! DOH!

I got a two year warranty... about a year and 9 months, I think mine may start "loading improperly". ;)

Posted by: shane | February 23, 2004 12:42 PM

I've had my Lexmark Z51 for about four years. It's not a bad printer, but if I want to print more than 10 color pages, the ink disappears way too quickly, and it's always just one of the three inks - this time, it's magenta. The Canon looks pretty neat, and I do have a birthday coming up...

Posted by: Don | February 25, 2004 9:44 AM

My wife and I printed out some text/color graphics stuff she wanted in HQ mode. It turned out quite nice. I'm not used to using inkjet printers that have such a high resolution.

Posted by: aharden | February 27, 2004 11:09 AM

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