Upgrading printer

[cometboy]

I have a Canon iP4000 printer that I have owned for about two years. I'm happy with the printer, but have become interested in moving up in the printer world. I refill with great success and other than print fading, I am happy.

I have been shopping for a better quality, more archival printer. I read reviews of various printers that rave about print quality, but I would like to see the improvement myself, by having a print made of one of my photographs that I could compare to a print off my ip4000.

This gets to my question. No store that I have gone to will print a copy of my photo. I've gone to several retail outlets and one high end photo store, but no one will print out my file. It's kind of like trying to buy a car that no one will let me test drive.

One solution might be to ask on this forum if someone would be willing to print my file on their own printer (for an agreed upon fee, of course) and mail it to me. Is this a reasonable thing to put out on the forum?

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

 

[mikling]

Decide whether you want to move into a wider carriage if so, then there are really only two alternatives if you are into refilling and want true archival qualities. The Epson R1800 or the R2400. If you are more into color and don't do Black and White then the R1800 might be the ideal candidate.

If you don't need to move to a wider carriage then the only one worth consideration is the the Epson R800.

If you print on a regular basis, like at least once a week, there is no other to consider. Why? True archival and refillability of the Epson OEM refillable cartridge. No flushing of cartridges like required on Canon, Epson near perfect cartridge seals compared to Canon's and perhaps the most important aspect. The availability of excellent archival pigment ink like Image Specialist's. The clog issues with Epsons are overblown if you print on a regular basis AND you use proper cartridges with good seals. Obviously the EPSON OEM reigns surpreme in this area. The OEm cartridges are fully resettable for complete like new functionality on ink levels.

For a good deal on an R800, check out the Epson's store on Epson USA website. You can get an Epson refurbished R800 for about $200 with full warranty and it comes with full cartridges. These models may end up being the sweet spot of high performance economical archival printing.

With the chipped Canons and the inability to reset I think a full re-evaluation of Canon printers might be due.