I do not know what to think of these inkjet printers. So far we've owned both an Epson and HP. Cost wise it does not seem to come out much cheaper than a good photo service... replacing a single ink cartridge is about 75% of the price I originally paid for the printer.

If I try to get maximum value for my letter sized photo paper by printing more than one image per page, I have to figure in the fun time of trimming those images out.

Trying those nifty red-eye correction pens on the ink-jet photos doesn't always work well with the inks either.

And finally, I am starting to see photos I had printed getting pretty faded after 8 months of hanging on the wall with some indirect sun. I did not realize that there were as many different qualities of ink-jet paper as there are colors in the rainbow. Cheaper papers fade quicker. So now I am buying the top of the line HP Premium Plus Glossy photo paper to see if it can hold an image for at least a year. Even that says I have to leave it dry for days before mounting it.

The only thing that they are clearly good for is saving a trip to the mailbox to order prints or for making lots of little changes with a photo program and seeing the changes immediately. This is definitiely a nice benefit but that's about the only real one we've seen.

Tags: inkjet, life