Photo printer advice, please? (too late, now I've bought one)

I have just converted from Win 7 to Win 10. Everything worked well after the conversion – except my trusty B/W laser printer. Canon refuses to write drivers for such an old machine, so I am contemplating buying a new printer.

My mind is set on a colour photo printer and I have tried to grasp today’s market – which makes me somewhat confused.

Epson EcoTank ET-2550 sounded perfect at first (what an ink supply!), until a local tech told me that that model is no photo printer (it is “just” a 4-colour machine). At least, I ought to look at Epson models XP-55 or XP-960, being 6-colour machines. [Or Epson SureColor P600 or P800 – but those are far too expensive for my meagre budget.]

Would you have any bright recommendations?

/Claes in Lund, Sweden

I would agree with the tech, I don’t think you’ll be pleased with the output from a 4 color printer. I’d go for at least 6 color. The XP-960 is a solid choice, you may also consider sliding down the output expression line of printers to an XP-830 if you don’t need the feature bump up to the 960 ( I think its the scanner unit that is the difference).

You may also want to look at the P400, it is less than the P600, at least here in the US.

I am very familiar with Epson printers, so if you have some specific questions, please ask.

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With regards to your b+w laser printer, you could try a “universal” print driver. I have successfully used the cost free Xerox one against a Canon printer. http://www.support.xerox.com/support/global-printer-driver/downloads/enus.html?operatingSystem=win10x64

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Sorry I completely skipped over the laser part. If this printer is networked, there is a high probability that you can use a generic PCL driver to print to it or configure IPP and spool raw data to it.

@patdavid it seems a shame to have threads like this in the lounge, which some are locked out of, but there doesn’t seem like there is an applicable category currently. Perhaps Processing can work to fit output questions into? Printing is certainly part of my process :smile:

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Or I could just unlock the lounge for everyone. I think you’re right.

Unlocked.

just curious - is a WIN8.1 driver availabale and have you tried that already?

I managed to get my old MP500 to work in Win10 with removing all old Win7 drivers and reinstalling Win7 drivers again.

@martin_malepo Hi Martin!
No. Only 32-bit drivers are available from Canon.

well then the only other way which comes to my mind ist to set up a virtual win7 system serving that printer and then try to setup network printing from your win10 host. not sure if that amount of time is worth it so.

The 32-bit drivers won’t work? I thought I saw something about being able to run them in a compatibility mode…

Er… don’t spoil it, please. I am on the verge of
buying a brand new photo printer to replace that
12 year old b/w scanner/laser printer thingy!

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I don’t know how you use your printed photos, so my own experience may not be relevant; mostly I make videos and slide-shows out of my photos. And I would add that my experience with inkjet printers is pretty dated.

That being said, I find I don’t have a lot of need for printed photos - they mostly go in a box somewhere and it is rare that anyone ever looks at them. There are commercial sites both locally and on the web where you can have printing done and I use these on the rare occasions I need them. So I use a laser printer because it is the cheapest way to print what I need most of the time. I bought a new one a couple years ago because supplies were becoming hard to find for the one I used to use.

The one time I experienced an inkjet printer it was not a happy experience. Fortunately the company I worked for then paid for supplies because those were expensive. Whether I used the printer or not it seemed to need new ink cartridges about once a week. I don’t recall how much those cartridges were but if I had to pay for them myself I would have looked for a replacement printer.

On the other hand, the inkjet printers were very cheap then - and probably still. They no doubt intend to make up the cost through the sale of supplies.