Black Friday shopping accomplished -- such as it was
Since I was lucky enough to unexpectedly stumble upon the perfect gift for my Dad in late October ( even at a great sale price, still by far the most expensive one I've ever bought for him, and I think for anyone ), and I don't really have any great ideas for my Mom, I was only shopping for myself today. Although my monochrome laser printer is perfectly adequate for over 90% of the printing I do, I've been looking for a new inkjet to supplement it for a bit over a year. When I got my new computer last October, I discovered that Vista would almost work with my old inkjet; not too surprising considering that I got it "free" when I bought the old computer way back when XP came out.
I've been kinda-sorta looking for a new printer for two or three months, and have been finding the reviews pretty depressing and/or irritating. Reading what customers say about printers on Amazon, Staples, Office Depot, etc., it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that all printer manufacturers are evil, greedy bastards who are not content to merely take as much of your money as possible ( which, after all, is more or less what any business does ), but have to do it in such a way as to make sure that you feel like you're being ripped off, too. Standard practice for nearly all of them is to sell the printer at or below cost, then make all of their profit off selling ink cartridges at inflated prices ( meaning that, ounce for ounce, printer ink is among the most expensive substances on the planet, though most people aren't consciously aware of it because they're only buying a few milliliters at a time ). By itself this wouldn't necessarily be that bad, but a lot of people seem to be under the impression ( whether justifiably or not ) that the "print head cleaning" that printers do deliberately wastes ink, and/or runs much more frequently than it needs to, due to the fact that the color cartridges claim to be empty despite the fact that they've only been printing things in black and white. Then there's Kodak, which is currently taking this to the next level by advertising a line of printers that use ink that is much cheaper -- but have sensors to determine if you are printing genuine Kodak brand paper ( with a similar price premium ), and software that deliberately reduces the quality of the print if you are not. Very not cool, Kodak.
I ended up going with an HP Photosmart Plus, mainly because it had the fewest number of complaints about how quickly the ink runs out, and most reviews say it gives good quality prints fairly quickly. Also, the design with the touch-screen on the left corner suits the place I'll be putting it. I guess I'll have to see how it goes.
I've been kinda-sorta looking for a new printer for two or three months, and have been finding the reviews pretty depressing and/or irritating. Reading what customers say about printers on Amazon, Staples, Office Depot, etc., it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that all printer manufacturers are evil, greedy bastards who are not content to merely take as much of your money as possible ( which, after all, is more or less what any business does ), but have to do it in such a way as to make sure that you feel like you're being ripped off, too. Standard practice for nearly all of them is to sell the printer at or below cost, then make all of their profit off selling ink cartridges at inflated prices ( meaning that, ounce for ounce, printer ink is among the most expensive substances on the planet, though most people aren't consciously aware of it because they're only buying a few milliliters at a time ). By itself this wouldn't necessarily be that bad, but a lot of people seem to be under the impression ( whether justifiably or not ) that the "print head cleaning" that printers do deliberately wastes ink, and/or runs much more frequently than it needs to, due to the fact that the color cartridges claim to be empty despite the fact that they've only been printing things in black and white. Then there's Kodak, which is currently taking this to the next level by advertising a line of printers that use ink that is much cheaper -- but have sensors to determine if you are printing genuine Kodak brand paper ( with a similar price premium ), and software that deliberately reduces the quality of the print if you are not. Very not cool, Kodak.
I ended up going with an HP Photosmart Plus, mainly because it had the fewest number of complaints about how quickly the ink runs out, and most reviews say it gives good quality prints fairly quickly. Also, the design with the touch-screen on the left corner suits the place I'll be putting it. I guess I'll have to see how it goes.