My trusty old Epson Stylus Ex printer has died. Looks like the black print head died and I’m skeptical getting it serviced would be worth while given its 5 or 6 years old… Actually sounds like a great excuse to buy a new gadget!
Our other printer is an HP G85xi mutli-function. Does a fine job of photos for kids projects, scanning, faxing, etc… It’s upstairs by the kitchen where my wife & the kids can access it.
We also have an HP C130 4×6″ photo printer we use for printing up pics for the extended family. Works great.
The Epson is in my office and it’s the printer I use for everything. I don’t do a ton of serious photo printing, but want something that will do a really good job when called upon.
One of the nice things about the old Ex is that it is a 13″ wide printer and can thus handle Tabloid paper and other big jobs.
So, I want to get something that can do 13″ wide stuff, has really good photo capabilities, is reasonably fast for standard non-photo printing, and will last at least as long as the old Epson has.
Looking around, I see Epson has just released the Stylus Photo R1800. None of the literature says much about it’s performance in non-photo jobs, but it sure sounds like a nice photo printer. Steve’s Digicams has a review of the Canon i9900 which sounds like an amazing machine.
However, none of these reviews talk about printing good ‘ol text and graphics in (mostly) black & white. This makes me wonder if you really shouldn’t use a photo printer for regular jobs. Is this true? Do I really need to buy two printers?
Or should I just get a lower end 13″ capable printer and forgo the “really good photo capabilities” requirement?
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