Printer - head alignment

[Dave2002]

We have an old Epson printer, which we keep using because the compatible cartridges are cheap. Periodically it needs head cleaning.

Today I wanted to print some documents, and when they were printed they really looked rather a mess. I did the nozzle check thing, and this time the output looked OK, but the printouts were still terrible.

As the printer has been moved from elsewhere, and was, at least temporarily, being connected to a MacBook Pro, I thought that maybe aligning the print heads would make a difference, but I couldn't find out how to do that at first. Eventually I found out how to access a Print Utility in Mac OS X: - System Preferences -> Print and Scan -> Utility then Open Print Utility then Print Head Alignment. After running the alignment procedure a couple of times to tweak it, the quality of the printed documents is now very much better, and almost as good as some of our much more recent and less "worn out" printers. I really did want to get good quality printouts, as the earlier prints were pretty shoddy.

Maybe now, when we get train or airline tickets it will be possible to print out the tickets and/or boarding cards without running into problems with those funny bar code things. We've been stopped a few times in the last year because our home printed boarding cards were not recognised by the readers at the barriers.

So, if anyone is feeling dissatisfied with printer output, try head cleaning first, and if that doesn't fix any problems, then try print head alignment. Might save you having to spend out on a new one, and might also avoid problems at railway stations or airports.

[Don Petter]

I'm not arguing for or against any make, but it's worth bearing in mind that while Epsons (as I understand) have the print head as part of the printer, and this can wear over time, in HP printers each cartridge contains its own print head, so you get a new one every time you change.

Of course there are financial considerations over the source and price of cartridges.

[Old Grumpy]

That's interesting DP, thanks. We also have an ageing Epson printer, which is hanging on by a thread. Will certainly consider HP when thinking of replacement.

More pressing at the moment is what to do about my XP laptop...


OG

[Dave2002]

I'm not arguing for or against any make, but it's worth bearing in mind that while Epsons (as I understand) have the print head as part of the printer, and this can wear over time, in HP printers each cartridge contains its own print head, so you get a new one every time you change.

Of course there are financial considerations over the source and price of cartridges.

We have several major makes of printer - 2 x HP, 1 x Canon and 1 x Epson right now. The Epson now has probably the worst print - though it's better and acceptable with the tweaking. However, being USB only and not having a scanner or any other feature, it is simple, and mostly reliable enough, and the printer cartridges are really cheap - even if they don't last long. Perhaps the Canon has the best print for both photos and text - MP560, while the HPs are quite good, but were a pain to set up, and even now are somewhat tetchy.

The newest features, such as being to print directly from iPads and iPhones, and to use a remote printing service are neat enough (HP), but they are not reliable, and exporting data to external sites (one of our HP machines does/can do that) is not a great idea if anyone is worried about data security - though perhaps nobody really cares. The set of print cartridges for the Canon is likely to cost well over £60 if every one is replaced, though it is not always necessary to do that. We only use "original" cartridges for the HPs and Canon, which are expensive, while for the Epson it's old enough for us not to care.

I can't really comment on the printers other than that. Although wired now seems old fashioned, there is a lot to be said for just plugging something in that "just works" - which is more likely with a USB printer without a separate scanner and copier - though we have used some of our copier devices for copying crosswords and puzzles - without even connecting to a computer.

Depends what you want to do, and also what space you have. The MP560 Canon is relatively huge and heavy - very solid - "good" machine. Some might consider that overkill. The HPs are somewhat smaller, though it has been HP software which has let us down in the past, even if eventually HP did issue software fixes.