I've been using an Epson Photo Stylus EX for some time now to print digital photos, quality is great but it takes very long to print (more than 10 minutes for an A4-size page in advanced photo quality). Also the ink cartridges are expensive, which makes printing large numbers of photos prohibitive not only time-wise but also financially.

I was wondering if there is anyone out there who has experience using another printer that combines true photo quality with a lot more speed. Ideally it would also have relatively cheap consumables however speed is the first problem to tackle for me.

Many thanks in advance!

-- George (george.spark@usa.net), January 02, 2000

Answers

Check out the website at Missupply.com. There may be some information for you. As far as speed is concerned, 10 minutes for a print is not so bad. It takes 12 minutes to process an illfochrome print at the same cost. The newer epson printers are supposed to be faster, however that is also dependent on the speed of the cpu, unfgragemented hard drive space, memory, and the other tasks you are doing at the same time. Also turning off printer colour managment helps as well.

-- Jonathan Ratzlaff (jonathanr@clrtech.bc.ca), January 03, 2000.

Check out the Epson 900, its a 4 color printer but it has a 3 picoliter droplet size for fine detail and the ink tanks are larger than your PhotoEX. Its also a rocket, easily twice as fast as my 1520 Stylus. In fact the 900 is so fast that it has a built in fan to cool the print head. Also, dont stick it on a Pentium 90, give it a crankin' machine to work off. The only downside is that it only supports 8x10 so the PhotoEX may still be your only choice for larger format. Cris Daniels

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), January 03, 2000.