[NTLUG:Discuss] Color printer for Linux

[steve]

Leroy Tennison wrote:
> I have a Canon BJC-610, supposed to work and it might but it's been 
> sitting for a couple of years.  Tried the cleaning option and it just 
> cycles forever.  Don't feel like paying $200+ for a new print head...

No - that would be ridiculous in an age of sub-$100 printers.

> I rarely use color mainly because of the cost of ink so i would like a 
> color printer which I could somehow clean and store for an extended 
> period of time without having the kind of problems I'm having with the 
> BJC-610, any ideas?  Thanks for any and all replies.

The way cheap inkjet printers are currently sold, the cost of the
printer is insanely low - and they make all of their profits on
the ink/print-head.

Hence, you can pick up a printer with a *tiny* ink cartridge for
under $100 - and then pay $50 for a set of cartridges to fill it.

So when buying a printer, it's the cost of the ink that kills
you - not the printer itself.

In your case, if the cartridge gets clogged through lack of use,
then this is doubly the case since you're going to be throwing
out more costly cartridges than is otherwise reasonable.

So don't look at the cost of printers at all - just take a
walk down the cartridge aisle in Fry's and find the cheapest
(even if low capacity) cartridges - then go look for a printer
that fits it.

Finally, you could always stick a cron job on one of your PC's
that prints a postage-stamp sized rainbow once a week.

That would suffice to keep the jets un-clogged and waste a minimal
amount of ink and paper (in fact, you could keep recycling the same
piece of paper if the thought of wasting 52 sheets a year irks you).
You'd still have to keep the printer turned on though - so you
might want to invest in a cheap mechanical timer to turn the printer
on for just one hour a day - timed so that when your cron job runs
every Saturday night (or whatever), the printer has already been
turned on and warmed up.

I suppose you might find a printer that automatically cleans it's
heads each time you turn it on - then you could just stick it
in a closet somewhere - plugged into a timer so that it cycles
the clean-cycle once a week or so - and dispense with the cron
job.

   Steve.