Are home printers still worth having?

I am currently using macOS Monterey 12.1, the current version at the time of writing, and my five year old HP A3 printer has been working fine.

It’s a pity you have disposed of the printer, Andrew, because printer manufacturers may release updates. Many years ago I had an Epson scanner that would not work after an OS update but a couple of months later it was up and running again.

I have a Brother laser printer which I used to print out band parts, unfortunately I bought it last century and things have now changed so much that I can’t use it with any other computer than my Acorn RISC machine, and I can’t use that because my monitor finally gave up the ghost and there are no monitors available that are compatible with it.

Sometimes progress sucks.

Welcome back, jjmmwgdupree. It’s a long time since we’ve seen you here so I hope everything is alright with you . . . apart from your printer and monitor problems.

I expect you have had good service from your legacy kit and hope you will be able to upgrade your set-up satisfactorily. Good modern equipment is faster and very reliable but the proprietary ink trap is the thing to look out for if you move away from laser printing. People expect their printer to be a peripheral of their PC but in practice it turns out to be tied indefinitely by a virtual umbilical cord to its manufacturer.

One of our members for over ten years. Welcome from me too and I share your frustration about computer peripherals that have become obsolete.

John is referring to the blocking of use of third party ink cartridges by printer manufacturers, which can occur as a result of a firmware update. Most people have no problem which may be the reason why Which? has rarely mentioned this issue and reviews alternative brands of ink at sensible prices.

This recent news article warns that buying a cheap printer can be poor value for money because of the cost of ink, presumably because the cartridges tend to be smaller: https://www.which.co.uk/news/2022/01/are-cheap-printers-worth-it/

It is a pity that this article does not mention using third party inks which can be much cheaper than originals, but next to it on the Which? homepage is currently an article about third party ink: https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/printers-and-ink/article/best-cheap-printer-ink/best-cheap-ink-cartridges-aaOXG7F0Tgol I’ve used Internet Ink for years on the recommendation of a friend.

Internal paper trays leave the paper flat until it is needed. A rear feed can be useful for heavier card or photographic paper but that can be put in as required, but a printer with just an internal tray might suit your father.

Although some people have reported printers being blocked from using third party cartridges the risk seems to be associated with firmware updates. I have not had any problems with my printers and what I have saved by using third party of ink would have more than paid for replacements.

I would buy an ink tank printer if I was buying for myself but I sometimes do a lot of printing.

I don’t know how well ink tank printers are at dealing with just occasional low volume printing.

My printing needs now are relatively light so ink cost is not much of an issue. I use Canon ink in an MG 5750 that cost less than £50, copies and does double sided. The original cartridges lasted a decent time and while replacement ink is not cheap it is rarely bought. Most important to me is the durability of photos and my experience of Canon ink over 20 years has been good, so I don’t intend to risk that with cheaper inks.

Were I doing a lot of printing I would certainly invest in a good ink tank printer.

I have learned to live with my £699 Epson EcoTank-7750, but I still dislike it. I have learned the margin settings that stop it printing in the wrong place, I have found card that works well with the cr@p colour it produces, I have learned it is better to create greeting cards that don’t have borders, I have learned to wipe the print bar frequently to stop it smudging and ruining my cards. If I was wasteful and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg, I would get rid of it.

In It has printed 2 years Xmas cards, many greetings cards, many self-isolating delivery notes for the front door plus whatever else needs printing and has only used one third of the original inks. That is the only good thing I can say about it but if it used a bit more perhaps the print quality would be greatly improved.

It stopped working completely until I did a power clean that used quite a lot of ink. I was surprised it needed it when it is in regular use.

I remember you reporting your hassles with margins when printing cards, Alfa. My advice is to experiment with different paper and card because that can make a huge difference in print quality. I don’t know why neither of my HP printers produces good results using expensive HP photo paper (it was the same when they were new and still using manufacturer’s ink) yet some other brands of paper work well. Sometimes it helps to use the ‘wrong’ paper setting.

The printer performs better on photo paper but black never dries so I have to make it off-black. Well it probably would eventually but who wants to wait that long?

I have hundreds of 6″ x 4″ photo blanks thanks to HP giving me another ‘free’ pack every time I bought their ink pack.

They eventually have a use – printing chutney labels that come out quite well.

I have quite an assortment of non-shiny paper and have tried them but they all look washed out.

One problem is not being able to select draft, normal and best print for every type of paper as the printer seems to sense what has been put into it and only gives you a few options. I have tried setting up my own pre-sets but they didn’t save for future use. I will take a few screenshots later so you can see the problem.

If I was buying a printer for an elderly person, not having to clean blocked print heads would be a high priority. It should not be a problem nowadays even when a printer is used infrequently but it’s worth checking the one star reviews.

I’m glad you like your printer Vynor but it’s too pricey for my father.

I chose mine specifically for printing greetings cards with thick paper and the darned thing fights me every step of the way. What paper do you use?

I have tried printing cards from MS word, MS Paint, Corel PaintshopPro 2020, Epson Easy Photo Print and probably a few others but it makes no difference to the output.

I have just done a test. In MS Word a blank page with a border near the edge of the page – all margins the same, all the same distance from the edge of the page.

Cassette 2 (the main tray🙄) printed the page unevenly and pushed the border up slightly and right slightly more. I even printed it a second time with writing to be sure.
The rear paper tray that gives me so much hassle printed a very even border. Unbelievable !!!!

So then printed them again only borderless this time increasing from the edge of the page in case it printed off the page.

This time both pages were almost identical with even right and left borders but wider bottom borders.

These were all on HP Home & Office Paper A4 80g/m².

Uneven margins is not a problem when just printing text, but do you see what I’m up against? aaarrrrgggghhhh the mind boggles !!!

I did update the printer software a while ago and that made no difference either.

I recently noticed reviews on Amazon and it seems I am not alone. When I bought it I found mostly glowing reviews but look at the 1* reviews now:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B075NN6WTN/ref=cm_cr_unknown?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=1#revie
The 7700 was the A4 version.

@alfa, I do it very occasionally for family cards, usually printing a relevant photograph and editing in Word to insert text and other graphics. But very amateurish! I have 180 gsm photo paper which is only just self supporting when folded to A5 for example. I can choose to print to the edge but generally leave a border or stick the print onto thicker card. So not in your league, alfa!

There is a difference between using plain card and photo paper. The latter is coated and it can bend as a result in natural changes in humidity. It must be 20 years since I printed cards but nowadays I would go to a specialist supplier, as Alfa has done. The cost is less than a stamp.

It just takes a bit of practice malcolm. I am not much of an artist from scratch, but I have learned to manipulate graphics I find on the internet.

I used Jasc PaintShop Pro 7 that came as a free full version with a magazine for a very long time (files are dated 2001) but thought it was time I paid for it when I went to Win10 so bought Corel Paintshop Pro 2020. I still get confused with layers, so I find good old MS Paint invaluable. Gimp and Inkscape are a couple of free graphics software that although I have on my PC, I haven’t really got into mainly because I am more used to Paintshop Pro. All these graphics programs have quite steep learning curves that are soon forgotten if not used regularly, but I can usually find a YouTube video to help me out.

I don’t know if you have found these sites, but to add interesting text to cards this site is good.
https://www.flamingtext.in/

And interesting effects to photos and other images:
https://photomania.net/
https://www6.lunapic.com/editor/

I tend to use the Snipping Tool rather than downloading results as that removes the risk of viruses.

To overlay text on a photo it needs to be transparent (pure white background) that is easier to do in Paintshop Pro but can be done in MS Paint. You have to paste the text onto a blank page, set Colour 1 to white then use the ‘Fill With Colour’ tool. Then zoom in and use the Pencil to tidy up any loose pixels, picking in-between colours to feather edges with the Colour Picker tool. Filling with a dark colour can test how well it will work or has worked then undo. You can then select Transparent Selection and paste the text over an image.

I always keep versions of work-in-progress especially all the elements I am about to overlay as you don’t get many ‘undos’ in Paint, and saving graphics as a bitmap (.bmp) saves unwanted pixels being added to the image.

It’s good to be able to keep old products working, Gerard. I found that when an old HP laser printer was no longer supported it worked fine using a generic driver. It might not have supported all the features but it was better than scrapping a printer with a new toner cartridge.