Epson or Canon

[varothy]

I am looking to purchase a new printer. It will be either an Epson or Canon. Any Ideas? In the past I have had problems with HP clogging. The HP print head could not be removed for cleaning. My thinking is that it is better to have a printhead that is removable, however Epson printheads are not removable. Any thoughts on that? If having a removable printhead is not important, which would be better to purchase Epson or Canon? I do home printing don't really do pictures. I will be purchasing a set of refillable cartridges and precision ink for the printer. This is a good weekend to purchase it.

Victoria

 

[jtoolman]

Victoria, there is no real answer anyone can give you as to which Brand to buy. Since you do not print images / photos, you just need a regular 4-6 color printer. Maybe an AIO office type. Canon has many good ones as does Epson. Both support 3rd part inks. Canon OEM carts is the reccommended cart to refill. Remanufactured and refillables for the Canon are not as reliable as those for Epson.

As far as clogging goes, you must print with your printer. That's what it is made for and the problem with infrequent printing is simply that. Clogging. Though environmental conditions such as very dry air in your house or office also tends to encourage clogging. Ask 100 printer owners about clogging and you will get possibly that many different views and stories. I don't seem to suffer from it but I print daily or at the very least, weekly on all of my printers. See below.

 

[Fenrir Enterprises]

Strange, generally HPs have printheads on the cartridge or printheads that look like cartridges and can be removed/replaced (such as the printers that take the #11, #88/88XL, and #940/940XL tanks, current generation is the Officejet 8X00 series).

The older Canons were very easy to refill. I kind of wonder whether the methods to refill newer Canons are worth the effort, but a lot of people here still seem to prefer them.

If Epsons weren't so easy to refill and convert to pigment inks (for archival printing) I wouldn't be using them, I have had very bad experiences with the company in the past but I find that they're the only ones that work for my needs. For basic printing like you have, the Canon may be the easier choice.

As far as HP goes, I think the ones that take the giant tanks with separate printheads like the above mentioned 8X00 series printers are probably one of the best ones to get for people who only print on plain paper. The cartridges are enormous, and while relatively expensive, cost far less per print than smaller HPs, even using OEM inks. The feed mechanism isn't great for oddly sized or thick papers though, and it's annoying to print on envelopes, our 8500 Pro at the office jams if you try to print more than 1 envelope at a time, we have to run our mail merge envelopes on my Workforce 1100 that I'm keeping there right now.

 

[OutOFtheinkwell]

I went with Epson because I like to use the CIS damper cartridges with the flip top refill holes and the chip bar that tells the printer it is always full.
The Piezo heads are also very forgiving of goof ups such as last week when my wife printed not one but two cartridges bone dry!
A printer with a thermal print head might have burned out but I just refilled the dampers on the Epson 1400 and after a few prints it was back to printing our full color photographs beautifully!
Also, to save a ton of money, besides buying our inks in bottles we like to shop the Epson clearance store online looking for the factory refurbished printers we like. For our simple needs we like the Models 1400 and the Artisan 725. We bought 2, 1400 models for $149.00 each and one is still in the box after 3 years the first one still doing great! I also over time bought 3 Artisans and paid $99.00 for each and also am just presently working with the first one and am very happy. That model has stationary cartridges and they are joined to the heads by tubes.( interesting that Epson frowns on CIS tube set up's and uses tubing in their printers. They also have began selling their own version of printers set up with CIS tubing's and bags of inks!
All this was done over time so the small cost was not even noticed at the time. So, here I sit printing away, doing all I can to keep my presently working printers happy by printing often and knowing I still have 3 printers still in the box waiting for when the need arises! I don't know about you but that just gives me a warm fuzzy. Outoftheinkwell!

 

[OutOFtheinkwell]

Jtoolman said it, the best way ever to avoid clogs is to print, print, print.
Print something daily and if you go on a trip either arrange to have someone else print at least once a day or set up an automatic print sequence. Outoftheinkwell!