Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Gadgetry

Diptera got a present today. Since the old printer was also kaput, I went out to the grand PC Store and scouted out some stuff for the new rig.

You'd be surprised how far down the laser printers have come. They had a very good assistant manager show me a decent color model for $299, but it was a bit large for the Hive's needs. We talked Epson, the Official Printer of the Hive, and he made an interesting observation - they waste ink. Since it's already sort of pricey to begin with, this caught my attention. But he had a point. They run down sort of quickly, and it looks as though part of that is just excess dripping into the collection sponge running along the bottom of the unit.

Finally I decided that I was swapping brands. The ink thing just got me; and though the separate color ink carts were a nice touch, I realized that they weren't necessary. (It's not like I print a lot of exclusively blue things.)

Diptera is now hooked up to an HP 1315v, the new Official Printer of the Hive. Decent print speed (17 ppm, 12 for color), also scans and copies. Can I go wrong for 75 bucks?

Even nicer is the mini digital recorder; my 'too-many-stories-at-once' post led to a great kindness from a friend, who decided to get me a little happy present. Now I have an excuse for talking to myself all day. Heheheheheh.

2 comments:

Muley said...

I got an Epson, it prints great, but it sucks up ink like nobody's business. There's six colors, too, so I'm paying way more for the ink than for the printer itself. Sounds like you avoided this pitfall.

Will you be using the scanner function to post any pics from NJ? Hope so.

Sluggo said...

Very nice. I've got an HP Photosmart since I print a lot of pictures and am very happy with it. But I went to look at what they have now and the equivelant is half what I paid three years ago. If they came up with a Photosmart that scans and copies it would probably still be less. In that case, my printer would have a mysterious accident.