Remember Mallet’s Mallet? It’s a word association game where you mustn’t pause or hesitate from our collective UK childhood. You start with the words HP Photosmart C309a, and I say TURKEY! The damn thing just won’t print like it’s supposed to. Sure it will print, it will even print onto A4 paper completely borderlessly, yet when I define a page size with my own margin size it won’t work properly. I have spent the last month going back and forth with HP customer support and all they’ve managed to come up with is to tell me to reinstall the printer drivers. I’ve now done that close to 80 times and it never has an effect.
My Mac is running Snow Leopard 10.6.2, so I tried printing from Allison’s computer which is running Leopard 10.5.something, and so is using completely different printer drivers. It still didn’t work. Customer support have managed to keep me hanging on just long enough for me not to be able to return the device without a fight. Even if they take it back they say it will be subjected to testing to see if it really is faulty. A system which I expect is in place to give them the opportunity to say that it prints (which it does) and so refuse to give me a refund. Either way the printer is now back in it’s box and is for sale on Amazon.co.uk so I can try to get some of the money back that I wasted on it. Whatever ends up happening with that, so be it. Buying an HP printer was a mistake I won’t make again.
Now I face a choice and not an easy one at that. It’s time to get a new printer. I need one very quickly because there are store orders I need to produce and send out in time for Christmas, if they aren’t sent by the end of next week I risk more than a few justified complaints.
The old broken printer was an Epson. Back in the day they were very good, but now they seem to have let things slide, so I won’t be going down that road. Basically I’m going for Canon, either the iP4700 or the MP640. That’s where I don’t know what to do and I’m interested to see what you all think. Here’s the problem…
The iP4700 is just a printer and the MP640 is a printer/scanner/copier. Both have identical print quality according to Canon and they both use the same cartridges. The MP640 is around £30 – £50 more expensive than the iP4700.
First of all I have to ask myself what I need a printer/scanner/copier for. We already have a scanner of higher spec than the MP640 has and I haven’t needed to copy anything since I left teacher training. All I could say is that it would be nice to have the functionality incase I ever need it. Is that really justification for spending the extra money? More importantly the MP640 has Wi-Fi and the iP4700 doesn’t. Again I’m not really sure I can justify holding out for that either. In all honesty the only reason I want Wi-Fi is so that we can print from Allison’s computer, and as this is a Simply Syndicated printer bought with Simply Syndicated money, it’s fair to say that printing from Allison’s computer is absolutely nothing to do with Simply Syndicated, so why should it pay for it. On top of that even if the iP4700 is connected to my Mac then we can still print over the network as long as my machine is switched on, which it usually is.
Next, the only place I can buy the MP640 is online. Today is Saturday and if I order today it won’t be processed until Monday. I spoke to the only online store I could find that has one (thanks to @MrSnoobs on Twitter) and they say I can expect to have it between Wednesday and Friday next week. That means I could start sending out orders by Thursday next week at the earliest. Most would go out the following Monday. The iP4700 is sold in most electrical stores and I could go and pick one up right now, do the orders over the weekend, send them on Monday and most people would have their order in their hands by Tuesday. Does that difference in time really make it worth getting a less functional printer that I can’t really justify getting in the first place?
Finally there’s the price. If I ordered the MP640 today it will cost £148.70. If I went and bought the iP4700 from our local branch of Comet it will cost £109.99. A price difference of around £30. Being that a complete set of new cartridges is around £35 that means I’m spending a set of cartridges on functionality that “would be nice to have”. Further problems arise with the iP4700 being available online for around £90. If I’m willing to wait until the end of next week for the MP640 doesn’t it make sense that I should be willing to wait the same amount of time for the iP4700 in order to save £20?
Right now I’m thinking I should get my ass to Comet, buy the iP4700, make the outstanding orders over the weekend and have them in the mail on Monday. Over the course of writing this post I think I’ve talked myself out of the MP640. While £50 isn’t a lot of money in the grand scheme of things I can’t justify spending it, especially when £50 might represent Simply Syndicated income for a month.
I’d love to hear what you all would do in the same situation. Please help!
Of course, if the damn HP printer worked in the first place I wouldn’t be in this mess. That was £157 pissed away.
-Rich
10 Comments
Is it not possible, or financially viable, just to outsource the task of printing the DVD’s and their covers?
Send it off to Kinko’s and let them worry about inks and margins. Your talent should be spent doing things that are more productive, like creating new content, not screwing around with printers!
Always go for the not-all-in-1 option. That’s what I learned when I was trained to sell these things.
Vote: iP4700
We don’t have Kinko’s here. I have looked into DVD replication services but we’d have to order a few hundred of each disc, so we wouldn’t be able to offer anything close to the range that we’ve got now. Plus we’d never get them all sold, we only move a couple each month which is why we have to beg for cash when we need a sub £200 printer.
Howdy!
I’ve always found that those “all-in-one” units generally suck. Instead of one reasonably good device you end up with three fairly crappy devices. Buy the iP4700!
Bob
You are still wrong about Photoshop! ;p
The all in ones tend to do all three tasks at a sub-standard level. Unless your trying to reduce electronics clutter or are in need of a low quality device to handle all three tasks for general office work, they are a waste of money.
If you were to price a comparable individual scanner, printer & copier the prices would likely add up to more than the 3 in 1 device. What would lead you to believe that because they are all incorporated in one device they would be better than a printer designed just to print, a scanner designed just to scan?
You don’t need another scanner, you don’t need a copier so why over spend for what you don’t need when there is a cheaper device that will do the job for you. I have a Canon IP 5000, having switched several years ago from Epson as well. It’s quality blew away the Epson products I was looking at at the time.
I can print remotely over our wi-fi network just as you said, if I have the computer it is hooked up to turned on.
Besides the money you save will get you half way to your donation to not have to grow a mustache next Nov.
Why not just buy a printer that prints not a jack of all trades (they are always a compromise
) I have an canon ip5000 and it’s the best printer I have ever owned both in terms of quality, reliability and anything else you care to think of. I run it off the back of an airport express which is also a fantastic piece of hardware.
Sounds like you talked yourself in the right direction. Why wait for a more expensive unit that does stuff you don’t need? Get the cheaper one and print like the wind, my friend!
I bought the iP4700. If it doesn’t work properly you will hear my screams.
Wow. For 157 quid you could have done a lot better than the photosmart! Still, I have a HP printer and never have any issues. You’ve just got to give it some love!
‘s the call I would have made. And even if it turns out shit the new one will still be well within warranty. Good luck