I want to buy a colour printer that will work with Windows XP?

Question

but at the same time, don't want to have to refill it every five minutes. I am resident in the United Kingdom and would prefer to buy offline in an actual shop. Suggestions, comments, experience and price guides all gratefully recieved

Answer 1

I can recommend the Canon PIXMA ip4200 inkjet from PC World. It has got a lot of good reviews in the computer press and has a good ink replacement price. If you would like to buy online (I don't see why not) you can get this from www.misco.co.uk for £70 odd with postage. You can print onto CD's with this. It is very good.
I think Argos sell it as well. Shop around.

Answer 2

If you are planning on refilling you really don't have too many options these days. Epsons are chipped and need to be filled under pressure. HP integrated a memory into all it's printers. And well Canon has a chip cartridge as well. That leaves you with LEXMARK which are awful.

I would recommend actually buying a refurbished HP, they are quite easy to come across. The cartridge numbers you want (high capacity and easy to fill are 45, 15, 78, 23, 41, 17, 56, 57, 28, 27) Any printer that takes a combination of any of those two will fine.

As for compatibility HP provides updated drivers for pretty much all their printers on their Website.

Answer 3

simple just go and browse www.dabs.com they have some great buys often 10 to 30% cheaper than you can get in the high street even after you pay postage.
buying in a shop fine if you can afford the extra expense.
i recomend browsing dabs.com find a printer you like then go to your local pc world or other retailer and ask for a printer demonstration most good retailers will allow you to try before you buy.
but for the best TCO you should be looking at buying a canon or other proprietry brand.
you shoul be looking for the cost of the cartridges as well as the cost of the printer and the types of paper you want to print on to.
if you want to print photographs then you want a printer capable of a higher DPI than one for simply letter printing.
typicaly 720DPI is a low resolution for example and 1440 is a higher resolution try and get the highest resolution that your overall TCO budget will allow.
for reference if you are not familier with the term TCO, this simply means the Total Cost of Ownership over the life expectancy of the product you are looking to buy.
you can typically do a lot of research online by visiting sites like dabs.com as they typically provide detailed information on the specification of the items on the site.
the only down side to buying from dabs at the present time is that all there business is done online meaning they don't have a telephone number for you to call if you have any questions or if you have a problem with a product.
you can if you like even sign up for there catalogue to be sent to you if you prefer to read your data offline

Answer 4

Any new printer will work with Windows XP. HP makes the most reliable printer and cartridges are at a decent price. If you don't want to copy or scan, go with the HP 8250 (6 cartridge printer, buy all 6 in a pack for $36 and it will last quite a while). If you do want to copy and scan, try the HP 1610 or 2575. I have the 2575 and it works great.

Answer 5

Try A Hewlett Packard model # 1610. A great compact 3-1 ( printer, scanner and copier) The refills are some of the cheapest of all printers and with normal use will last 3 months or more. Will also print color pictures with fair results. Cost around $ 150.00 US.

Answer 6

Epsom printers are a good choice and you can buy refillable tanks that hold a lot of ink I use this and the refills are really cheap although these are external to the printer and are linked by a tube setup you get a set of tanks for around £25 with refill. you can then buy any cheap inks keep the original ink cartridges in case the printer developes a fault then if you have to send it back put them in to maintain your warranty they can't tell if youhave used any other type of ink

Answer 7

you may want to try connecting the printer directly to the Vista PC to see if it functions any better - not so much to permanently change the setup, but to just eliminate the network connection as a source of a problem. Our tech at work also said that he has on rare occasions had better success using an XP driver on a Vista machine. That's something you may want to try.

Answer 8

You'll have a much harder time finding a printer that WON'T work with windows xp. Your best bet is to research printers online and read user reviews, then see what people have to say about ink usage. I think www.pricewatch.com is a good summary-type web site that will give you a lot of vendors to choose from.

Answer 9

pcworld.com and pcmagazine.com both have reviews. The printers which use less ink often have smaller cartridges-so were still refilling all the time. I don't know how they might measure pages per print cartrige. This might be a new marketing or advertising promotion by printer manufactures

Answer 10

there are loads of printers that work with Windows XP. USB printers are the main printers now as the Parallel Printer cables are now 'out of fashion'. theres Comet, PC World, Staples (I think they have printers - I am only popping these out of my head!!), etc, etc. any PC shop sell colour printers that work with Windows XP.

Hope this is fine for you.
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