(Insert stupid Blog name here) - Good riddance to bad rubbish... Part 1

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Time to start the next 100 Stupid Blog Entries.

 

Well, I got rid of my old printer this weekend. I had an Epson ColorStylus R200*. When (if) it worked, it printed very nice colors. The problem with Epsons, is they have awful problems with the print heads clogging up. Frequently. So you have to run a cleaning cycle, which spews ink through the heads to try and clean them out. Usually, I'd have to run the cycle several times, wasting more and more ink. Sometimes it would never clear the clog until the offending ink cartridges were replaced. I got to the point where I just let the heads be clogged, and printed color stuff out at work, and just left the Epson for the occasional e-mail or text file. Even then, the quality became unacceptable most of the time.

 

This weekend, it ran out of ink... again. On five of the six cartridges (cyan, light cyan, magenta, light magenta and yellow). So I reluctantly went to Staples to buy ink. "This is the last chance for this printer," I thought, even as they ran up $75 worth of ink. I've been wanting to replace the printer anyway, but I figured that I'd use up the rest of the black (which I'd just replaced), and however far the color got me. When I got home though, as I went to install it, the printer utility informed me that the black ink also needed replacing. Again.

 

Forget that.

 

So I went back to Staples, and got my money back on the ink, and bought a new printer. This time, I went with a Canon Pixma MX700. This has been a very highly rated printer series for a few years, and more importantly - my folks own one, and they haven't had any problems with theirs, and have been absolutely delighted with it for a couple of years now.

 

The $50 rebate doesn't hurt either.

 

It's also got a built-in scanner, which is good, since my scanner is twelve years old. And while it works (thanks to a system hack, a FireWire-SCSI adapter, and some other voodoo), it scans like a 12-year-old scanner. 300 dpi, and not the best color accuracy one could hope for. I've been doing any color-critical scanning at work.

 

So far, I've been very happy with the Canon. The software is better, the prints are better, it's faster, quieter, also functions as a copier (very handy) and has a fax machine built into it, if I ever happen to need one.

 

Not bad for $129.

 

The downside? It came with "starter" ink cartridges. Apparently this is becoming common practice with inkjet printers. The ink cartridges are the same size as normal ones, but have about 1/4 the internal capacity, so about the first thing you have to do... is buy more ink.

 

Razors and razor blades. I'm tellin' ya'.

 

That, and I had to download a half-dozen updates from Canon's site. Note to Canon: Put everything in one update! It ain't that hard, kiddies.

 

*(Incidentally, I bought the Epson because it was one of the few printers that could print directly onto CDs. However, we now have a disc duplicator at work I can use for that. It has its own problems, but I'm not paying for the ink.)

 

Coming up in Part 2: More rubbish. And an ode. You don't see odes in this blog very often now, do ya'? I think not! It'll be special.

 

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