Jane,

I have a HP Officejet 5510 all-in-one. I mostly use it for business, but it prints a good photo.

Eric

I used an HP 4206. It usually did pretty well. Last week I got an HP 46oo series printer. Again, very base level but seems to do a pretty nice job. I've read HP's Vivera inks are hard to beat.

On a related note, I'm curious what other photogs might do for printing of larger sizes. Above 8x10?

I used an HP Photosmart 3210xi All-in-One. It has 6 cartridges of Vivera ink (02 type).

I liked the printer and printed product. It does a good photo print on photo paper and poster papar. Finally, one feature has failed. It came time to do a scheduled print alignment and that function failed. Now, it pesters me to run the alignment every time the printer is powered on. it still prints ok, but sometime in the future when the ink drops drift from optimum, it will ne aligning to correct. I think the optical sensor has failed or is merely dirty. The sensor is hidden somewhere on the bottom of the printer head and impossible to see.

I have run 11,700 sheets through this printer, so I've gotten good use out of it. I went looking for a replacement and found that printers using the 02 cartridges have been phased out. The ink is yet sold to serve existing printers. Discovering that modified my thought of shipping the printer back for repair. I'll put the money into a new printer.

I did not find any printers in the stores that uses 6 color. Most use a tri-color cartridge and one black. The next step up in picture quality is 3 color cartridges plus regular black. The next step up is 3 color cartridges plus 2 black cartridges: regular black plus a photo-black. I bought an HP Photosmart Premium Series C309. Its rated speed is faster than my old printer (which was fast enough). I was happy to see that it uses Vivera ink because I need to print archival quality pictures. (Very Low fade rate graphics)

I'll be setting it up in the next day or two. If it does a good job on photos, I'll be satisfied. The ink cost should be a little less than the old printer.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to reply.

I bought a Canon MP560 wireless several days ago, and so far it is great. The photos are very clear and sharp to my eyes. This 3-in-1 has 3 color cartridges, and two blacks. It cost $100.00 at Wal-Mart. It maybe is less expensive elsewhere, but I like the easy return policy and no shipping, etc. if I want to return it. My old HP used only two cartridges - a tri color and a black. I do think the photos I just printed from the Canon are superior. A 4 x 6 only took a short time to print as did a greeting card.

I am very pleased so far. Jane

RC, for large prints (actually, for anything I want to frame) I can recommend Mpix.com. They've done some beautiful work for me. They occasionally have sales on one particular size, and I try to take advantage of those.

I recently tried Adoramapix.com, as they were having a sale on 11x14's--plus their prices are generally lower than Mpix to begin with. I was pleased with the quality of their work, too, except several of the prints had a corner bent in shipping. I'm surprised that happened, because both services packed their prints very well.

Thanks for the ideas Allisande.

I used a lexmark all in one for years and it did well. I still use it for scanning, but the paper feeder broke. I got an epson in a great deal that only prints, it uses 6 ink colors, so you only change the empty cartridge . A warning pops up so you can see the level of each color. The prints are terrific.

I too have been looking for a larger print size. I check out the mpix and adoramapix. That is probably better than actually buying a new printer. I am thinking of checking locally with the printer companies also.

I have a large format printer, but really don't use it anymore. I use it for local stuff that really isn't important to me. If I want nice prints I use Adorama. They do excellent work and the prints are true to the file. No undertones.

For home printing 8x10s I have an Epson Artisan 50. I bought this as a "throwaway" when I needed to print labels on a run of several hundred white-label DVDs (not peel and stick labels).

Good lord, the thing is wonderful. I was absolutely shocked. Excellent photo prints, great color rendition, saturation, etc.

And the quality of print on the DVDs are top-notch.

The printer is about $80-$90, and the carts (1 black, 5 color) are available through B&H. High-capacity ink carts are the better deal. I buy replacement carts when they go on sale.

Last August I moved from Ohio to Massachusetts. Jan & I planned on taking about 3 weeks for the trip so we could get in some sightseeing photo time on the way. For the trip I packed my computer tower, 3 DSLR's and about 8 lenses plus an assortment of other odds & end. The remainder of my equipment was packed and shipped with an anticipated delivery date of 4 to 6 week.

For my photo business I usually deliver the end item in digital format on a memory card or I have prints made through Adorama but I did need a new monitor for my computer so about a day after arriving in Massachusetts Jan and I went to Staples and got a nice flat screen(I had been using one of the old desktop boat anchors..LOL).

Jan is just a beginner at photography and she said she wanter to get a photo printer for her computer, so we looked around to see what our options were. One a display in the isle they had the Kodak ESP 7250 All-in-one on sale. Normal list for the wireless model $129 and the hard wire model $99 less 25% for the next 2 days.

I didn't know a thing about Kodak printers but in my mind it had three things going for it.
1.It was the cheapest printer in the store,
2. It is advertised at using the cheapest ink,
3. Would Kodak put their name on a photo printer that doesn't do a descent job of printing photos?

When I got it home rather than mess with a detailed Wifi setup I just plugged in a USB cable from the printer to my router. Inserted the setup disc and sat back. Within moments I was watching a setup video that said it was all set up and went on to explain the features.

Two paper trays. The top tray will handle up to 5x7 photo paper or business envenlopes and the bottom tray handles up to 8.5x11 legal size bond or photo paper. When your printing photos it will ask you which size you want and select the paper automatically.

I had a pack of 8x10 generic photo paper so I loaded a sheet, went to my pictures and pulled up a photo then hit print. A couple clicks as it loaded the paper then it went silent. "What is wrong" I thought? About 10 to 15 seconds later I got my answer. nothing wrong, it just prints so quiet you can't hear it running till the finished print pops out.

I then checked the print, and to say I was not happy would be an understatement. I can only eplain it in one word...trash. The print had way too much ink, was still wet and actually smeared when I touched it then the thought hit me, those are new ink catridges and usually you have to run a test print to set up the print heads.

I checked the book, and sure enough, there is an easy test print to run, but I found something even more interesting. You only need to run the test print if you use non-Kodak photo paper.

So here is the catch I thought. All genuine Kodak photopaper has a bar code printed on the back of the paper that tells the printers processor how to set the print head for that piece of paper. This means you can easily switch from gloss to semi-gloss or matt without changing the setup, but how much does genuine Kodak paper cost? To my complete surprise, while Kodak Paper is a bit high in Staples, at WalMart it is the same or cheaper than HP photo paper.

When I began running prints on genuine Kodak paper I could not believe my eyes. The prints look better than those that we had printed at Walmarts 1hr service.

To get a good test of the prints I selected 6 photos and put them on a memory card, then I printed them on this machine. I then took the memory card to 4 different 1hr photo service places around town and had them printed again, being careful to mark the back of the photos to know where they were printed.

I then took all the photos to the photoclub meeting at our senior center and spread them on a table and asked everyone to select which they thought looked the best. Over 90% of the people who participated selected the prints from this printer.

The printer also has built in memory card readers so it can be used as a stand alone printer, and the Wifi model will work directly from Ipods & Cell phones.

Would I recommend this printer? Absolutely YES. in fact since I bought this one over half the people in our photo club have also bought one.

I primarily use 4x6 paper, which is $7.00 per 100sheet for brilliant glossy white at Walmart.

I have not priced the ink at Walmart but at Staples the ink is $19.89 for the color and $9.98 for the Black, but staples also gives a $2 rebate for any used cartridge you turn in. (Up to 10 empties per month).

I just found a website this morning for cheaper ink cartridges for almost all printers.

Thru the site I can get color cartidges for this printer for $9.98

www.inkjetSuperstore.com