I've just ordered a EPSON R300, given that epson are a lot cheaper printers to maintain (individual cartridges too), however I was wondering where the best place to buy cartridges was, or and whether its best to get official ones or cheaper cartridges?

Always pisses me off that it costs so much for a bit of ink.

i have that printer! damn good choice i've not had to change my cartridges yet and i have done quite a bit of high quality printing so far but i have some all ready to go.

i got some non Epson carts from SVP..let me see if i can find the link to em............
here

i was originally gonna get the Jettec bundle deal for 18 squid but hey...i'm a cheapskate and spotted the IM JET bundle deal and got those but like i say...not tested em yet so they could be crapola

Argh, Epson hates me. I have had a couple and I gotta say they were shit, i assume they have got better LOL

Spud, Try these.

http://www.eezytrade.co.uk/acatalog/Sty ... -R300.html

i get my compatable cartridges from here and their dirt cheap with free UK P&P

well i gotta say this model (R300) is the tits mate! quality is superb and cartridges have been pretty good to date as i have said i've done quite a few (maybe 20-25) DVD inlays on photo quality paper and i reckon my carts are just under half full atm

and it also prints on the discs which is why i buy bulkpaq's printable surface dvd-r's (also from SVP)

Well the ultimate piece of shit I had a long time ago was an original Canon bubble jet... that thing was the vast turd of the printing world.

There's a communal printer which is a 930c, but eats ink and the cartridges are really expensive.

I read some reviews, which mentioned the R200 for DVD covers and DVD printing, but then i noticed this R300 was ~?5 more and its basically the same printer with some fancy stuff in.

Epson have these chinese clones which is why their cartridges are dirt cheap, they are by far the cheapest cartridges available, and print quality on epsons are rather nice too.

I think the ultimate conclusion is that all printers are absolutely shit, and the cartridges for most are an absolute rip off. What the consumer really needs are some big tanks, you open the lid, you pour whatever ink into each bit and then your done. But they make their money off of this cartridge shit, and they make refilling with syringes a total mess.



Its supposed to be nice though this print, not tried it myself, should arrive on friday. thx for the link bass.

they are more expensive than the ones i got from SVP

I own the Epson R200 printer and as already stated by some its a very good printer. Especially for printable dvd-r?s i got some very good results.
But a word of warning, some time ago i bought some realy cheap cartridges from ebay at ~ 1.50 euros per piece and after printing about 60% of ink from them the black one and the mangenta one began to leak
but thats perhaps only my bad luck or punishment for buyng the cheapest ones i found

Out of curiosity, how much ink does one epson cartridge contain?

18ml in these non Epson carts

yup, they aren't tiny or anything either, remember with other brands they generally have all in one cartridges too, so you only get a tiny amount of ink (damn you HP!)

So it's 6x18ml?

yup, it can work on 3x18ml though, and i think there are some bigger capacity cartidges too.

Are you comparing to a tri-colour printer? The colours in the R300, accoring to all the reviews i read:

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow
Light Cyan, light Magenta, light yellow

Which saves on the cost of the cartridges because they don't need to mix for light and dark colours. I belive they operate on the 3 colours like normal printers usual do, and obviously use more in ink in the process

I think there's no light yellow, only lingt magenta and light cyan. There's black instead.

I'm trying to find out about the maintenance costs, I have a 930c and honestly I think it's not so expensivew to maintain. It is possible to buy an original black cartridge (42ml) in Poland for ~16 euro, and a double capacity tri-colour cartridge costs ~23 euro (if you know where). That's not the price you normally get in shops though.

you got a 930c too? well there's lots of things i'm pissed off with.

The thing eats ink and you don't get a decent amount of prints out of it for the money,
The print quality is okay at best, I'm really dissapointed with the quality of many DVD cover print outs,
Ink is twice the price of epsons at least,
Trayloader is annoying, particularly for double sided printing,

Its an okay budget printer I suppose, but its not so hot for DVD covers in my view, and that's mainly what i use it for (if its got any ink left by the time i decide to do some printing... its not like anyone prints anything out that's ink consuming).. Whereas everyone i know with an epson gets cheaper ink and better dvd print outs so screw it, Its not worth pissing around with the HP930c anymore. Its nothing beyond mediocre at what it does

This link just appeared at fh.org:
http://www20.tomshardware.com/consumer/ ... er-10.html

R300 has best picture quality and its second cheapest by 0.02$ (well third, 2 canons came in at 0.03$, but as you might have gathered above, i've gone off canon) on b&w, and 0.11$ a sheet for mixed.

Anyway, the point of that link is, look how expensive HPs printing is

Bassline, you've pretty much convinced me to buy this printer, a quick question though :

SVP sell 3 different compatible cartridges, the Jettec (fairly cheap), the IM JET (stupidly cheap) and the SMART JET (utterly fucking RIDICULOUSLY cheap) which have you used? and how cheap is it "safe" to go?

it fucking rules pca, best printer I've yet had. Miles better print quality than the 930c, easier to install cartridges (cheaper too!), better software, better driver... its just better. Haven't printed on a CD yet, but that just makes it better. The R300 screen is great and it has an extra usb and SDcard slots. If you don't want those the R200 will be cheaper (but I got it at the same price as a R200 on special offer).

First cartridges go down quite fast, but it said that it was charging the printer heads and the second batch of cartridges wont' do this.

Top titty!

i bought the IM JET carts IIRC they where about a tenner for all six colours at the time,not sure of price atm as SVP does tend to change em often but as i have said before i've still not needed to put em in as i still have a bit under half of my original epson carts left

Computer technology is evolving almost faster than we can keep up with, new gizmo's and better solutions coming up every day, yet we are still stuck with shitty ink cartridges, and laser being too damn expensive. bah bah bah