Which all in one printer to buy?

[Yorkie]

Most ink jet printers seem to feature copying and scanning, and most are wi-fi. (Not needed if you only have a desktop PC but essential if you also have a laptop, i-pad whatever).

Some have five colours (including light magenta and light cyan) other have just have three - cyan yellow and magenta. One the face of things, five may seem more expensive in ink, but to produce a picture with a given number of pixels takes the same amount of ink whether it comes from three or five cartridges.

Some printers allow the use of high capacity black cartridges, which is useful if you do a lot of B&W printing.

I'd never consider a printer with a combined colour cartridge, because the individual cartridges on all the printers I've had run out at very different intervals. I think some printers won't allow you to just print black if the colour cart runs out.

Unless you're a keen photographer (I'm not), and require the highest quality printing (I don't), then ink costs are by far the most significant consideration in my view, and I don't think there's a discernible difference on paper printing from one make and model to another for normal purposes - web pages, text etc. For the few photos I need printing off, I put them on a memory stick and get them don't at a local shop to a good standard for pennies.

We all know what the business model of all printer makers has become - sell printers at ludicrously low prices as loss leaders, then charge 100 times more per ml for ink than the finest vintage champagne, and try to make the printer software not accept none OEM cartridges.

This is an ultimately unsustainable failed business model - a set of Epson inks for my Epson SX535 is £45.00, or I can buy a non-original set from a reputable supplier with an extra black cart for £16.00. Or Epson, HP, Canon Kodak will sell me a new printer with a set of (half empty) cartridges for £45.00 or less. Do Epson (et al) really think I'm going to pay as much for a few teaspoonfuls of ink as I would for a new printer. Not a chance - cheapo ones work just fine.

I primary requirement for me (admittedly I'm in a minority) is to print high quality acetates for PCB artwork. Hy HP printer which had printed more than 10,000 pages till it gave up the ghost did that superbly. The Epson SX535 had such excellent write ups at the time (18 months ago) that I paid £145 to buy one - well over the odds for alternative printers. It won't print on acetates (with or without genuine Epson inks), whatever paper setting is used, and has no transparency setting.

Epson seemed to think it was my fault for expecting to be able to print onto acetate and said none of their domestic printers will do. Hmm, odd that because when I look at the comprehensive specs of HP printers, it's hard to find one that doesn't have a transparency setting. I can't say how well they print as I don't know anyone who has one or has tried this feature.

Bottom line is if I were looking for a printer today, the first thing I'd do is to check the cartridge capacities and the OEM price of them, then the price, capacity and availability of alternative cartridges. Disregard warranty issues in using non-original cartridges - you'd blow the price of a new printer on your first set of OEM cartridges.

The only thing that stops me binning this Epson (which prints well enough on paper - don't they all?), is the hassle of setting up a replacement printer. All makers say they work straight out of the box. Well not for me they don't, and after half an hour faffing about my eyes glaze over and I start to lose the will to live.