During my years in business many people have asked what is the best
printer. After reading this article you will be in a better position
to determine the best printer for you. The major manufacturers are
Hewlett Packard, Lexmark, Canon, Epson, Xerox and Brother. Lexmark
makes many printers for other manufacturers such as Xerox and Compaq.
So you may see printers with another manufactures names that are
actually Lexmarks.

The biggest names are Lexmark, HP.Epson and Canon. There are two
major categories of inkjet printers. On one the print head is built
right into the inkjet printer cartridge itself. This is a cheap print
head meant to last a short time. The other has the print head built
into the printer itself. This print head is meant to last the life of
the printer. Now the reason this is important is that there is a huge
difference in the cost of cartridges between the two types. This may
be one of the main factors in your choice of printers.

Hewlett Packard from now on called HP and Lexmark are the ones with
the print head built into the inkjet printer cartridge. These are the
expensive cartridges sometimes costing $35.00, $40.00 or even more.
These cartridges are much more expensive to manufacture. Also these
companies have patients that keep other companies from making cheaper
substitutes. This keeps the prices up.

The other style of printer cartridge is just a plastic container
with a sponge in it .Ink is injected into the sponge. This makes for a
very inexpensive cartridge. Many companies are making substitutes for
these costing less than 25% of the cost of the Lexmark and HP
cartridges. The print quality of both types is of cartridges is
excellent. So at first glance it might seem that the obvious choice of
printers would be the printer with the lost cost cartridges.

However there are some other factors to take into consideration. If
you print once a week or perhaps every two weeks the print heads can
dry out on the printers with the built in print heads. These can be
hard to get going again. In some cases You may not be able to get them
going at all. This means a new printer. Never take the cartridges out
of this type of printer for long periods of time. Such as for shipping
as they can dry out so bad you may not be able to get them going. New
printers are shipped without cartridges but the print head doesn't
have any ink in it so there is nothing to dry out. The other style of
print head also dries out but On the Lexmark and HP this isn't so much
of a problem since you can get the cartridge out to clean it and in
the worst case you can always get a new cartridge.

Now after all of this you may be confused as to which is the best
one for you. It really depends on how much printing you do or if your
willing to print a test page daily then The Epson, Canon or Brother
type printer might be right for you. The print quality on some of
these is incredible. Some of these manufacturers recommend printing a
page at least every two weeks. I have found this is not nearly often
enough. I suggest a page every day or two. If you don't print often
then one of the HP or Lexmark might be better. The print quality is
very good on either type.

In this case you can use refilled cartridges to cut down on costs.
Well I hope this helps I've been I the refill business several years
and I have seen the problems people face with these. But it's worth it
the printing quality is incredible. Some of these printers are capable
of gallery quality prints.

Author: Richard Sherland has been recycling cartridges for 6 years.He is the
owner of www.economyinkjets.com The author has also been a Broadcast
Engineer and owns a computer repair business.His new site is
www.economyezine.com