Look for the one that has the cheapest ink!

They are all built in the same warehouse, in the same country .. China!

I have used Epson for years but there is Nothing that would prevent me from purchasing HP, Cannon or whatever!

It's All about the ink!

HP has the printer head on the ink cartridge, that's why I have always used HP, but I hate the last one I bought. If I run out of a color cartridge it will ask me a couple of times if I want to print in black and white, I click yes and it prints. After doing that a couple of times it wouldn't let me print without installing the color cartridge even though the black cartridge was new. I hope all their new printers aren't like that.

I hate the HP,constantly looking for updates,changing settings to offline, and it will only recognize a cartridge when new, can't swope with one started on another printer, at least it will not let you know how much is left. OTOH, have had my Brother laser printer for several years and have never needed tech support or resetting. Only problem I have had is when HP tech support deleted the driver for the brother trying to install HP for about the tenth time and have never been able to add it back into the DOS setup as before. Somehow I got it to work but I have to use the windows version. And the toner is far cheaper, although it is only in black. My beefs with HP are many, too many to bore you all here.

The latest high end HP all-in-one printers have fixed ink jets and separate ink cartridges. Both types of HP printers, ink jets on the cartridge and fixed print heads, can be found. Clogging of ink jet heads has always been a big problem and that is why initially, HP started with the print head on the cartridge. It was a patented feature. Later, HP develped a way to keep fixed print heads clear, and then they began to introduce fixed print head printers.

Your grainy prints can have two root causes: 1) Poor scan and resultant poor file; 2) Poor printing of a good or bad file. I have an HP flat bed scanner that is going on 10 yrs old and that is the one I rely on when I need to have total control of a scan. it has a rugged mechanism and still produces excellent results.

My last two HP all-in-one printers have done excellent work when copying photos. Both of these have fixed print heads. The alignment sensor failed on my first HP all-in-one otherwise I'd still be using it. I can't complain. I had run 11,700 pages through it. I discovered that the ink cartridges were being phased out for this printer (type 02) do I decided to update to a later printer. Glad I did. Although there are fewer cartridges, color prints are just as good and the ink has better smudge resistance.

berk-
It's also important to remember that all-in-one computers, while very handy, are typically not optimal photo printers. Although most such printers should be able to give you decent prints, you might be happier with your photos if you had a separate printer that is specifically designed for photo printing only. As for what you are experiencing right now, it's hard for me to say: that Kodak all-in-one does get decent reviews, so it's reasonable to expect better performance than you are getting. If you decide to get another all-in-one, and/or a photo printer, look at the Canon Pixma series.

for what you want done you need a photo printer or one of that quality, not a general use all in one printer.
I have an HP all in one 6200 series that works very well and I do and can use ink cartridges I buy at walgreens which are much cheaper, but for photo printing I have and use a dedicated HP photo printer.

Your results can only be as good as your starting product, if the originals are not perfect then a copy will definitely be worse than the original. When you are scanning then printing that is using 2 variables either of which or both can also aid in the deterioration of the end product. Added together you would rarely get a perfect result.

I just bought an all-in-one Epson Artisan 700 and really like it for the convenience etc. but it will never replace my Epson Photo R320 in what I can do on that what can't be done with the all-in-ones.

I should say done a lot simpler because of the way the sheets are inserted. At least I can see the paper and control my printouts better with the stand alone.

Like most requests for a recommendation, its a lot easier and on-point if the asking member narrows the search to specific manufacturers and models of interest. The shotgun approach to answering is often vague and of little assistance.

DA

Something has come up recently. My friend has a HP printer and always has been able to use Kodak photo paper until now. They are coding the photo paper so it will only work in the brand of printer you have. Her HP printer will only print (good prints) on HP photo paper now.
Anyone else run into this problem?

sound more likely they somehow changed the page type on the print settings window...

When you buy a printer in the store, you generally can get a test print to see the quality.

To get good photo prints, the printer normlly will need 5 to 6 separate color inks.

dcarch