| Author | Message | ||
     Swampy |
Is there an inexpensive printer/scanner that will work with Windows Vista? Out of sheer frustration my Lexmark 1200 no longer exists. Thanks for you consideration on this manner. | ||
| Slowride |
Epson R260 or its big brother that has a scanner.... I have Vista 64 and it supports my OS. (Message edited by slowride on September 08, 2007) | ||
| Brinnutz |
It shouldn't matter, check the manufacturer's website for updated Vista drivers before investing in a new printer/scanner. If you've done that, then well I guess its time for a new one.  | ||
| Reepicheep |
A friend just got a cannon "all in one" scanner / copier / printer free with the purchase of a new computer. It looked like a nice little unit, no idea what consumable cost or durability is. It installed with no fuss, and shared across a network happily (which I can't always say about HP and Epson printers). I don't know if it is still true, but Epsons replace just the ink and leave the head when you buy a new cartridge, HP's replace both the head and the ink. That should make the Epson cartridges cheaper, but it never felt that way to me. Some epsons (5 ink cartridges colors instead of 3) can now really do photo quality, and they have a nice collection of thought through archival papers and ink combos. Cost per page gets painful though. My biggest beef about the epsons was head cleaning. It was getting too expensive to keep replacing black cartridges, so I got a cheap used laser printer for "grind out prints" and only used the epson for color. But then every time I used the epson, I had to re-clean the heads, which uses a boatload of ink, so I was getting very few prints per $60 set of cartridges. I just stopped using it, and just don't do color now. That was years ago though... don't know what state of the art is now. It sure is nice having a networked laser printer sitting down in the basement though... feed it a new $30 toner cartridge once every two years, and just keep printing printing and printing... | ||
| Teeps |
In the last 10 years I'v been through 5 printers. All ink jet. No matter the brand they last about 2 years. Then for one reason or another stop working. I'm thinking of getting a laser 3 in one machine next. As I have no great need for color printing. Anyone here have a suggestion? | ||
| Swampy |
Thanks for the recommendations. My problem is I am so far out in the sticks that we don't have high speed internet, only dial up, and downloading anything like a driver takes hours. I am so far off out in the woods I don't need spyware as the hackers can't even find me. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Any new printer you buy should come with an install CD. They might not be the latest greatest drivers, but they will be stable and easy to install. | ||
| Brinnutz |
Swampy, The Vista Driver is available, it's 40.5MB download. This site will take you directly to the download where the pop-up will come up asking if you want to save it. If you have unlimited dial-up time I would download it overnight... http://www.downloaddelivery.com/srfilecache/cjr120 0EN.exe If, you can't leave your net connected for that long, PM me and I'll mail it to you on CD for free! That way you won't have to go out and buy a new printer. Well, before that, tell me if your Printer is over One year old, and if it is, then it won't have a Vista driver on the CD and you'll need this to make it work on Vista. I'd be happy to help a fellow BadWebber save money. =) Your local computer geek, Me. | ||
| Brinnutz |
By the way, Swampy, if you have a constant download rate of say...28.8 kb/s, then in theory should only take you about 25-30min to download depending on how fast you actually download. | ||
| Swampy |
Thanks so much for your generous offer. I will just try again with a fresh box that says "Windows Vista Compatible" I honestly do live at the end of the line, The last pole is at my house. | ||
| Slowride |
Swampy, I am an IT Guy with 13 years in the business so far. I am a semi pro photog guy and I am a diehard tweaker/gearhead. I have had every major brand of printer out there. The Epson R260 I blurrted out is one of the best printers I have worked with in a long time. It is the 6 ink model and yes it only changes the ink not the heads, but I pump out 20-40 pics a month on that printer and still do regular stuff on it. I get no lines, streaks or other bs that would require you to clean the heads constantly on it. Epson makes a model just above the R260 that has a scanner, if that is what your looking for. As for the other printers, well Lexmark is the isuzu of printers. Cheap, they work most of the time and well cheap. I can get new lexmarks printers for what it cost to replace the ink in them. Same thing with most other HP/Canon and Epson low end printers. As an IT Pro and Semi Pro photog, I couldn't have picked a better printer. I am completely wireless in the house and I never had a glitch with this printer, plus as I said earlier... I am running Vista 64 which was a crapshoot with periphrials, because I was one of the very first to by the 64 bit vista os. I had to wait 5 months to start seeing printers that would support my OS. Food for thought...... The laser printers are nice.... Fast.... quiet.... and generally 3x as expensive to operate than an inkjet. I have had two... the best in my opinion. They were Okidata single purpose printers. They cost around $100 new and they outlasted all of my inkjets, matter of fact the laser toner lasted through three of my inkjets and I printed SLA's and Contracts constantly on them. Ok, I'm out! Good luck with your shopping. | ||
| Barker |
Vista is not compatible with Vista. Go MAC. | ||
| Deton8r |
I recently went through a similar experience with an HP printer and Vista 64. The printer is a Photosmart P1000 which HP claims is incompatible and they will not release drivers for. Luckily before I tossed the printer I found an overclocking forum where somebody who claimed to be an HP employee informed me that this was BS and to try the Vista built-in HP Deskjet 970c driver. Sure enough it works like a champ. I seriously believe that there is a conspiracy where peripheral device manufacturers and Microsoft are trying to get everybody to build/buy new machines. Anyway, the moral of this experience is you should try existing drivers for other models before spending money on unnecessary hardware. | ||
| Brinnutz |
Swampy, save the cash and just get the drivers..It will work then I tell ya! I can do it no prob, I already downloaded the drivers to my desktop when I posted that...so...=) Let me know | ||
| Jackbequick |
I got an Epson R200 running under Windows 2000 and it is a good reliable printer that does a good job on printing photos. It uses 6 smallish ink cartridges (more colors = better tone quality) and I buy non-OEM cartridges from a place down in Florida at a much better price than the I would pay for the Epson branded originals. As near as I can tell the cartridges and ink is just as good, it may even be from the same ink makers. HP's greed at the pricing of ink cartridges, their not allowing anyone to make non-OEM replacements, the stupidity of having to throw away all the unused ink to replace the color that was depleted, and the general decline in the quality and service life of the InkJets led me to try Epsons and I've been happy with those. I still also have a HP LaserJet 4L (the small, home use sized, LaserJet) that I use for text/black only documents. That was made new in march 1994, I bought it at a yard sale for $2 in 2000, and have been using it ever since. I had to buy a new toner cartridge (5,000 +/- page service life) about 2-3 years ago, it has otherwise not needed any other work or ever failed me. The old LaserJets met the standards of quality and reliability that reflected the personal standards of Misters Hewlett and Packard and brought the HP name to where it is was 10 years ago. HP has been in a steady decline for some years now while under the control of a series of megalomaniacs who were looting the company for personal gain. Jack | ||
| Brinnutz |
http://www.woot.com/Default.aspx Here's a good deal man | ||
| Nondual |
Vista is not compatible with Vista. Go MAC. I know a lot of people here don't like me, so my opinion may not mean much - but I had two trainwreck experiences with PCs before I went Mac. I'll never go back to Windows. I value my sanity, my hair, and the love of my family too much. | ||
| Jackbequick |
Sounds like you don't have the right skill sets for some levels of technology to me. If you couldn't come to grips with a Windows PC you probably wouldn't be well advised to own a Buell or Harley-Davidson either. They require some amount of understanding and varying amounts of tinkering with. You've never owned a Buell or a H-D, right? But you can tell you don't like them and think there is all kinds of things wrong with them? For the record, I don't dislike you. Jack |
