I understand that the inkjet photo printers (such as Epson 870) have photo-friendly features (e.g., smaller droplets, etc.) and offer higher quality prints of photos compared to a general-purpose ink-jet printer (such as Epson 760). I would like to know what do I lose with a photo printer that I could have with a general-purpose printer other than the fact that the photo printers are usually more expensive??

-- Subhasis Laha (slaha@lucent.com), March 21, 2000

Answers

I don't think you will loose anything. With printers like Epson Photo series the black ink and color inks are in separate crtridges and you can monitor them separately for optimum cartridge changes. Well, not really optimum, since the Epson ink monitor advices you to change the cartridge long before it's empty.

Photo printers are usually considered too slow for general purpose printing but you don't always need the 'photo quality' with general text printing. You can choose between high quality/slow or low quality/fast printing.

Ilkka.

-- Ilkka Haapavirta (ilkka.haapavirta@nokia.com), March 22, 2000.

Speed. In general the Photo pinters will not print plain text quite as fast as some of the other Epson models. Unless you are doing a lot of high volume text printing they function just fine as general purpose inkjets.

-- Peter Foiles (lightcatcher54@hotmail.com), March 24, 2000.