After 3 years of devoted examplary services, my HP 940Cvr died a few days ago. When I changed the ink cartridge (genuine ones btw), the printer acted like I’ve never seen before. There are two flaps that goes up and down to support the paper when it’s getting printed. Normally, they move quite slowly. But on that day, they moves so fast, like the printer was trying to fly! The head (where the ink is) stoped in the middle between the "parking lot" and the printing zone, and the printer made very loud and strange noise. It took me several on / off before it would get back to life…
Now, there’s a deal on a Canon i950 at Office Depot. 70$ off. Does anyone around here has this specific printer? The last Canon I had was a BJC240 and it did good, well, considering it was a low cost printer. Else, what would be the equivalent in HP ? I don’t want Epson (nothing personal). I just want to get info on either Canon i950 users or what would be considered an equally good (or better) HP printer, for the same price (under 300 C$, 225 U$)
Thanks!
Ray P.S. Really no need to convince me on other brands. It’s either Canon or HP 🙂
I have the i950. It is the first printer I have ever had and only had it a few months. I believe it to be good, but I do not have any comparison. The pictures look good. I hope somebody else with a lot more knowledge than I will speak up.
How many photos do you print per month (average, really, nothing scientific here!) and how many times did you have to replace a print cartridge ? And finally, do you replace a certain color ink more often then anyother ?
Just a thought on your printer purchase quest. Does Cannon have return repair/exchange similar to HP. In warranty HP gets you back in business within five to seven days, and the next day if you are willing to accept another return and repaired printer.
Thanks Pete, I haven’t checked that option out. But, based on similar experiences with different devices, the cost of repairing is usually not worth it. I’ll check it, if I can find HP’s Montreal phone number.
Ray, I’ve had my i950s (someone said the s suffix is for Sam’s Club) for a couple of months now. It is extremely quiet, very sharp, good flesh tones, absolutely no banding (YIPPEE!!). I am a happy camper. I paid 199 us think i saw it for 149 last time at sam’s. They also sell refill kits for about $17. I have no qualms using these with this printer as the cartridges are only a tank (the nozzles are part of the printer). So operation costs for me are excellent. All in all I love mine. Good Luck in your pursuit Don McLean
I posted this to an earlier thread on "Currently Available Printers":
"I have a Canon i950, same as the i960 without the media card slots, and love it. Since everything I print gets run through PSE first the media slots were unimportant to me. I printed fourteen calenders, each with thirteen two sided pages for Christmas presents. That’s a total of 364 8 x 10 photos. Because of the large print job it was easy to keep up with costs. Each 8 x 10 cost $.39 (that’s USD for our northern friends <G>) for ink plus the cost of paper. For about $.62 I can make a beautiful 8 x 10 on the Ilford Smooth Gloss paper sold at Sam’s. I have since found Canon’s OEM cartridges for $9.26 each, while they are $11.99 most places. As for quality, the range of color tones and shades are definitely better that what I can obtain from my older HP. Six colors over the usual four does make a big difference. The drivers give you a lot of options so you have near complete control over the output."
My i950 is about 8 months old now, and still, everytime a print comes out into the tray I’m amazed at the quality in all respects. Like advertised, it’s also very fast. Steve’s Digicams website has a real complete review of it. Canon’s Photo Paper Pro (glossy) gives great results of course, but I find their Matte paper, which is way less expensive, is hard to tell from Photo Paper Pro when both are framed behind a glass.
Ron, if you’re getting your cartridges at that price over the internet, may I ask where?
I’m back from the store.. they have no more units. I guess that with a 110$ rebate (I got it wrong this morning, it was 399$ regular / 289$ on sale), they sold them very quickly.
He offered an i860 (one or two ink thank less), or an HP 7760. I’m unsure.
Ray, hang in there…i’m a strong believer that everything happens for a reason. What may seem ‘just not right’ ends up being ‘right….ever so right’ in the end…when all is said and done….all falls into place. You’ll see…. 🙂
Sleep "on it" not "over it", Ray! Just want to make sure we get you probably "Englishized"! 🙂
I just looked over the specs for both of the printers you’re contemplating. The i960 really looks nice, but where’s the paper tray? One of the things I’ve always liked about the HPs is the fact paper is inserted from the front. Does that make a difference to you? As much as I like the looks of the i960, I might have to take that into consideration if I was trying to decide on one or the other of these two models. But maybe you have more work space than I do – which wouldn’t take much.
Ray, the one disadvantage I see with my canon (besides the fact that I’m having trouble getting it to print a complete image from photoshop on Super B/A3+ paper) is that it cares a LOT about what brand of paper you use and Canon paper, at least where I live, is not nearly so widely available as HP or Epson and it’s significantly more expensive because of that.
You see Beth, once I got home, I realized that the paper tray (which is on the back of the Canon) is going to be causing a problem. My printer’s back is about 12 inches from the heat source. Now, it’s not heated because I placed it so the table is "filtering" the heat. But, I realized I can’t do that with the Canon. Space is not that limited, but the i950 (and i960) is bigger. I’ll have to move it forward a lot. And, since we’re running the heater close to 5 months per year, I do feel that the paper would become "yellowed" (not sure if this is a word !!).
The 7760 and my ex 940Cvr are about the same size. Further more, I’ll save on space (small gain, but still…) because it’s USB 2.0 and it has a card reader. I just hope the card reader can be seen by Windows as a normal drive.
Oh.. and it’s Mac OS X compatible (got to plan ahead!)
Ray P.S. Thank you for the English lesson, by the way. I like it when you guys tell me the mistakes I do!
Barbara… thanks for the warning! As I am planning to get a Mac soon (though not soon enough!!), it’s good to know. But I checked that earlier today. I looked at the price of consumables for both printer. HP here is remarkably more expensive (twice as much on paper, and all things being equals, about 20% on ink) than the Canon.
However, the print heads are getting replaced with every cartridge with HPs, and as I am printing for some people (sometimes), I do need to count on my printer to give me good results. Something I didn’t think when I posted, yesterday.
Tell me what you need in terms of Canon papers, I’ll buy them here and send them to you 😉
Hi, Ray. That’s very interesting. I can’t get anything except 8-1/2 x 11 Glossy photo paper for the canon without special ordering it around here, whereas all the office supply stores carry almost the full line of HP and Epson. Huh.
Yes, I always did like the fact that the heads are in the cartridges on the HPs. I never had any clogging problems in all the years I’ve had my HP printers.
Yes, Ray, "yellowed" is the perfect word to describe what might happen to the paper kept that close to a heat source. You’re doing good!
The way the paper feeds into the Canon would probably be a deal breaker for me, too – much as I hate to say it. And I appreciate the heads up about the paper, too, Barbara. Let’s face it, they’ll get us one way or another in terms of consumables! The Canon ink may be much less expensive, but they get ya on paper. Or for another brand paper is less expensive, and they get ya on ink.
Oh, Ray! Check out something before making your final decision on the HP. I seem to remember reading somewhere that users of the new HPs can no longer cheat and keep using cartridges long after the HP utility says the cart is empty. I don’t know – maybe I dreamed it! Or maybe it was tied in with one of the new Mac operating systems. I tried finding the reference again but never could. So maybe I was just hallucinating, but it might still be worth some research. What’s that I was saying? They’re gonna get ya one way or another.
can no longer cheat and keep using cartridges long after the HP utility says the cart is empty.
Hmm, Beth, think you’ve got it backwards, at least as far as my own experience in X. The utility almost always insists the cartridges need replacing, but you can go on for weeks before it shows in the prints.
Barbara: I don’t know if the fact that there’s a local branch of Canon in Montreal helps us to get lower prices around here.. ???
Beth : If memory doesn’t fail me, I think it was the Epson, and only on European models, that showed the "you can’t do anything more with your current print cartridges" even though they weren’t fully emptied. HP was found guilty of alarming customer way too much time in advance (like 40% of the cartridge was still available). I had this problem about 6~8 months ago. I use 1 color & 1 ink cartridge per month, and since then, message started to appear at about 20%. More reasonable.
I’ve just checked and the HP 7760 is on sale !! 30$ instant rebate, making it at 239 C$. I think that’s going to be it. I’ll sleep "on it" 😉 (hey! the guy is learning a lot today!)
There’s also one very good incentive to get a Canon, I’ve checked my inventory of paper and I have 2 boxes of HP 4 x 6 (20 sheets) unused photo paper, and about 50 sheets of 8 x 10s… and a few other boxes of less expensive HP papers (say it loud : Ray is suffering from insecurity!!). Now, after I read Barbara’s comment on Canon’s apetite for Canon papers, I should go the HP way to maximize my investment.
I should get it tomorrow, so I’ll report back my findings.
Ray, buy the printer and expect to spend some time with it over the first few days..printing, printing, printing…and if ya don’t like it….take it back ! That’s the way it works around here anyways.
No, I said what I meant to, and the reason I mentioned it is because I know that’s how it’s been, and I’m sure most HP users figured that out long ago like I did. I admitted I might have been hallucinating, except the memory has got so much detail! The discussion centered around the fact "everybody" had already figured out there was still a lot of ink left after the empty warning and had been accustomed to ignoring it. It seems some people were finding the printers quit working now. I didn’t think it was a post in which anybody was "reminiscing", but I suppose they could have been. Or, someone may have been writing about HP when they were actually thinking of Epson. If it’s been resolved, then that’s good news as far as I’m concerned.
I guess i say that because it seems there are mixed reviews about all the photo printers these days. I’m not sure what is going on…either people expect too much with little effort or they don’t put enough effort into learning how to use their printers correctly. Ya got users claiming ‘junk or crap’ while others claim ‘excellence’…in many of todays popular photo printers. I suppose I would be more likely to believe the ‘good’ reviews but can you really close your eyes to the bad ones ? Like a jury in a court room….they hear all despite what they are told to listen to or not…ya know. I don’t know. AS I said, try it and see if ya like it.
Yes my ink monitor tells me i’m low and the little red light flashes on my printer….i tend to keep printing until I see a color shift ;)….I’ve never run them completely ‘dry’…I’d be afraid of messing up my heads. There’s always plenty of things around here that i can print up for my daughter on plain paper when it gets low and the colors do funky things…she doesn’t care. 🙂
Ray, the one disadvantage I see with my canon (besides the fact that I’m having trouble getting it to print a complete image from photoshop on Super B/A3+ paper) is that it cares a LOT about what brand of paper you use and Canon paper, at least where I live, is not nearly so widely available as HP or Epson and it’s significantly more expensive because of that.
That’s strange. My Canon i950 has never seen Canon paper. I have used Ilford, Kodak, Royal Brites (super cheap), and Moab. I have used photo gloss, stain and matte. All with superior results! Sure it requires some tinkering with the drivers but I am more than satisfied withthe results.
Ron, I have found that the results from my canon are not exactly inaccurate with other paper, but they sure are flat compared to what I get with canon paper. Try some-maybe your printer will surprise you.
Jodi, having a somewhat rich computer background (+15 years in industry), I always take the following approach when reading reviews:
– Discard too good reviews (heck, nothing or nobody is perfect!) – Discard too bad reviews (nothing is that bad, there’s always good in everything / everyone, it may just not fit the current needs of the reviewer) – Average the remaining comments (if all that remains is good, check the number of posts / date, a great number of post in a short time could mean reviewers not so objective, if you can read between the lines) – Compare to my own needs (a list I usually put up before buying anything) – Decipher the reviews to find information relative to my own needs (did they talk about that feature ? if not, why, if so, what did they say about it?) – Compare with other products similar to this one – Ask for users’ & friends’ opinions (i.e. Adobe Forum!) – Finally, what do I loose by buying an inferior in feature / quality product, what I would gain in buying the "deluxe edition" ? Do I need / Would I mind not having those features ? If yes, select the apropriate product, and restart procedure all over 😉
If no, then make a list of required accessories (cables, consumables) and go to store, get product + accessories, grab the salesperson business card (else write name on Palm), bring the product back home, RTFM (goes like: Read The Fine Manual), and play extensively with it ! 🙂
249 U$… I live in Montreal, where the price for this little beauty is 349 C$ The other Canon (i950) was at 289$. My budget was 300$, I could have stretched it a little, but not that much.
Thanks again!
Ron, thanks for the info on the ink cartridges, and Ray the i950’s general retail for $249.
I don’t know if you have a Best Buy in Montreal. Yesterday, I saw a Canon i960 there on sale for US$149.95 (after mail-in rebate). My attention was drawn to it by an elderly gent asking if he could get a $50 refund. He bought it for $199.95 before the sale. It has the six ink cartidges but they may not be the BCI-6 series I use for my S9000.
I only used the expensive Canon Photo Paper Pro for special projects. Pro 8.5×11 sheets are around a dollar a piece. 11×14 and 13×19 are hard to come by. For practice and general printing, I use Kodak Premium that goes for $25 for 100 sheets of 8.5×11 at Costco, and the prints look pretty good. Better than the ones I had done by mall photo finishers. I’ve had luck with Epson 13×19 glossies. The color is just a hair different from Kodak, but I can bearly tell them apart under glass. Also tried a sample pack of Red River. They print beautifully, generally on par with the Canon Pro from my printer. Their satin paper looks to me to have finer rendering of subtle colors than the Canon Pro! And at only 70 o/o of the cost.
It’s here. Right beside me. HP 7660. Brand new. Unopened… 🙂
I decided to go with this model against the 7760 because I have no need for the color screen and advanced "no computer required" printing facilities (I never, ever, printed a picture without tweaking it the least). I talked with the sales guy and he explained that only the speed is different, except for the color screen, and that they will perform the same (quality, functions, etc).
It’s on sale (179 C$ instead of 199 C$). It should get installed later this evening.
I have an HP 7150. It is an older printer, obsolete now. I get very good results with Kodak Ultima paper with the satin finish. Compared to the HP Premium Plus paper, I have to go into the printer preferences and drop the brightness a couple of notches, and then it gives me excellent results. The HP paper prints well also, but it curls terribly, a lot more than the Kodak paper dies. I wish we had more choices of paper here, but it seems that Staples, Sam’s Club, and Wal-Mart only want to carry the common name brands. I would like to get my hands on some of the Ilford paper that people have been talking about recently, but Sam’s Club here only seems to have their brochure paper. Anyway, I think you made an excellent choice of printers.
Now, I’m home. Printer is installed. I’m smiling big time! 🙂
It’s calibrated: First very good thing : This printer auto-calibrates itself! No more "print a test page – (put on the glasses!) – tell the software how the lines are aligned – print a new page – confirm everything is ok"
Operation : It’s a little more noisy when compared to the Desjket 940C. But.. I’d say about 4 decibels more, so nothing serious.
It’s auto everything: turns on on printing, inserting a card and me stepping in the room with my camera in my hands… (ok, I’m just kidding for this one).
Card reader is functionning. Tested a Verbatim card (which wasn’t readable with my SanDisk card reader) and it worked fine! Tested a SmartMedia card (again, couldn’t be read by my SanDisk) and it worked fine again! Card reader is accessed through Windows’ Explorer. So far, so good!
Printed a test page. Oh lala! Life, on paper plain paper, I never knew it existed. Then, people, here this… THE PAGE IS STRAIGHT!!! I mean, I was never able to get a straight printout on my old printer. I mean, when it was new, it printed ok, but as it got old, pages were always printed with a certain rotation angle.
Now, printing a photo on Business Depot paper (was free with purchase).
I’m getting jealous! But I’ll wait until I hear how you like running it on Panther before I make any changes! I’m really disappointed in the way my HP Photosmart works under Jaguar. 🙁 And I have the latest drivers, installed according to instructions straight from HP. Does anybody else with a Mac and OS X run HP printers? If so I’d like to know if you have problems with them being very, very, very – excruciatingly very – slow. I thought a clean install with downloaded drivers would clear up the problem, but it doesn’t seem to have helped much.
Hi, Beth. As you know I’ve had calibration trouble in panther, but my HP 920C worked just fine in jaguar. No slowdowns.
X drivers for HP often have software conflicts, like printing all the graphics in an appleworks doc as black squares, but slowness is not a typical problem for them, really.
I think I’d e-mailed you about this a week or so ago. I’m still trying to finish setting up a clean Jaguar install, so there were no HP printer drivers on there at all. I followed the download instructions to the letter, but it’s still so slow! I was hoping getting that nice fresh driver would do the job. No joy. Although I don’t think it’s quite as bad as it had been. It performs so much differently in OS 9 that you’d think I had a totally different printer installed! Everything prints correctly, but you need the patience of Job to wait for it. And ‘Patience’ isn’t something I have a whole lot of. 🙂
so there were no HP printer drivers on there at all
Yes, there were. That may be your problem-you’ve probably got double drivers. jaguar and panther both include drivers as part of the system install.
Go to library/printers and remove everything that is not HP. Just drag it onto the desktop.
Download the new driver again (best to have a fresh copy) and run the uninstaller. If it asks you if you want to delete everything HP say yes, even if you have a scanner or something that will need to be reinstalled.
Empty the trash and restart.
Run the installer. Then if everything is working okay, you can put the rest of the stuff back into the printers folder.
Yes, I’m very happy. Photos are just a little bit too saturated, but I think this has more to do with my LCD monitor being not calibrated. I had this problem with the other printer, whereas I had to lower the saturation in PSE before I print.
Beth, the more I think about it, the more I think that’s your problem. The one set of drivers for HP that was excruciatingly slow is the set that comes with jaguar. They are pretty much unuseable. I suspect that somehow you haven’t been getting rid of that driver when installing the new one.
From my experience, Mac drivers have been best for Canon, intermediate for Epson, and lousy for HP. The original "Photosmart" HP printer would not even run on Mac at all. Consequently, I have migrated to Canon, for the most part. (Still have a old Epson 740i upstairs connected to the old iMac.)
Once again… I went through and took absolutely everything off that was an HP folder or preference and downloaded drivers again. When the printing job gets to the printer, there’s a marked improvement in the way the document prints over what I’d been experiencing a week or so ago, but there was no improvement over what I had yesterday. It seems like it takes forever between the time I hit Print and the point at which the printer starts printing. I don’t know by now if that’s an OS issue or a printer driver issue. There’s nothing left to try. And, yes, permissions have been repaired at several points along the line. What a pain in the —
Hmm. Spooling isn’t exactly lightning fast in jaguar but it shouldn’t be like what you’re describing, Beth. I’ll look around the next time I use my firewire drive and see if there are any other system files you might delete.
(and if neither work post that they did not and I will get you the correct link:)
Some of the questions posted get swift and numerous responses. But not all and I am still waiting for a reply to a question about margins on my cp1700 that I posted this morning.
Thanks for the HP link, Pete. I trundled around over there, but that 1215 is getting so old now (I got it in 2001) that all of the posts about it are very dated. I picked up only one hint, which I’ll check out in a little while. My 1215 has always been plugged into a powered USB hub, and I don’t remember ever having to install any drivers for the hub before; but I’ll look on the internet and see if there are any that should have been installed so it would work properly under Jaguar. I kind of doubt it, but there’s no harm in double checking.
And, Barbara, the 1215 is the only printer I have, and, as you can see from my response to Pete, it plugs into a hub connected to the desktop computer. Scratch multiple printers and networking issues from the list of possibilities! 🙂
Edit: According to the Belkin site, there are no drivers for my hub; it’s strictly plug and play. Later on – after I wake up a little more – I’ll go in and move stuff around so I can plug the printer directly into the USB port of the computer. If that doesn’t make a difference I’m totally out of ideas!
Just FYI. Like you I have a powered USB hub but talking with HP last year after buying my cp1700 they asked that I use one of the USB plugs on the computer. When I said it was working on the hub they again asked me to just move it to the computer and put something else on the hub.
If the tech gave a good explaination I don’t remember it but i did as was asked.
Thanks, Pete. That was the only thing I began to wonder about after I was looking on the HP site earlier today. I was crawling around under the desk earlier and realized I’m going to have to get a different USB cable before I can hook it directly to the computer; I don’t have one that’s long enough. 🙁 So, I haven’t checked yet to see if it makes a difference. But, doggone it, if I get a longer cable and then have to get under this desk again – it better! 🙂
Ray, just wondering how is all with the new printer ? I was just at the HP site looking over what they had for photo printers….curious leo that i am….and saw the 7900 series…8 color…interesting. i would be very tempted if it had large format printing ( 8.5 X 14…..not really considered wide format..imo ) anyways, just wondering ‘how much’ you liked it. By the time I’m ready to buy again I’m sure all the compatible companies will have great photo printers. …one can only hope.
I just looooove the new printer! Really, no bias. It’s so much better than my previous one. Faster, a lot faster. The draft mode doesn’t look as draft as the 940 (looks better). I haven’t bought the gray cartridge because I don’t like b&w, as you’ve known by now. On the 7760 and 7660 (mine), the gray cartridge is combined with the regular tri-color cartridge. On the 7900 series, the gray, tri-color and tri-color photo ink are used together. Some users have reported that even in color pictures, the gray cartridge is getting used, and used a lot. But reports are that the colors are just perfect, so I guess it isn’t only a marketing thing.
For regular photos, my 7660 uses both the regular tri-color and photo tri-color ink (totalling 6 inks). The colors with the special photo cartridge are so true to life, on both Staples’ paper and HP’s. But, my eyes tells me HP’s looks better. I got a pack of HP Everyday Paper and will try it later this week. It’s 4 x 6, and it was very cheap (it was on sale at 11.98 C$ for 100 sheet).
Borderless is true, even on 4 x 6 with a tab paper, but… you loose like 2/16th of an inch, being printed AFTER the tab dotted line. I have no clue as to why it’s done this way. The other 3 sides are trully borderless. Side note : borderless isn’t available for regular day to day printing (letters on white regular paper, for example). Odd, I don’t understand why.
Letters are sharp and crisp (I looked with one of my friend’s stamp magnifying glass).
The 7660 prints right on the center, with borders that is. My previous 940 printed slightly towards the top, but centered right to left. This one, the margin are the same top to bottom, right to left. No more "padding" documents in PSE !!!! Woohoo!
The Mac drivers, for our Mac friends here, are explained at great lenght (at least, in the French manual) and what is shown indicated (or suggested) a lesser number of user adjustable settings. This is not a fact, it’s an observation from the print screen and the instructions found in the user guide.
Finally, I bought a USB 2.0 cable. For regular jobs, like printing an e-mail, I didn’t see a big difference. But when I printed full sheets of colors, I saw a huge difference in speed! It only took a few seconds (2 or 3) before the printer started to print! The card reader is also much more faster with a USB 2.0 cable. Also, added bonus, there’s a cover for the card reader. It won’t gather dust!
On the bad sides… Ink cartridge are smaller, and they are consumed more rapidly. I mean they are smaller, but the printer uses more of them. I think the gained quality has its toll. But they are cheaper then Epson’s and Canon’s around here. Canon’s retails at 6 x 19.95 (six thank), 120$. HP’s are 28 + 48 + 35 (black, tri-color, tri-color photo), that’s 111$ Now, it’s really not a good comparison because with Canon, you only replace the empty one. With HP, you replace 3 at a time. (all prices are in Canadian funds).
As soon as my writings are over (class), I will be able to perform more detailed tests, and I will post results here. If people are interested, that is.
Ray, wow, great ! Sounds like ya made a good choice for yourself. The ink thing is kind of a bummer but one must sacrifice something…always to achieve the preferred results. I’m soooooo happy for you ! I have to go tend to my head now ( hurtin)….thanks again Ray…we got another foot of snow coming tonight….gosh i hope they don’t cancel school again 😉
The problem with those specs is that they usually apply to a no gravity, no atmosphere, completely sterile environment.. 😉 I was never able to acheive the specs with any printer I had (Brother HJ-400, Canon BJC-240, HP 940).
Also, I never print a letter (e-mail for example) without using the black cartridge, nor will I print a photo with the color + black cartridge neither. I can’t compare the speed because for various jobs, I will use various cartridge.
I thought that there was no gravity in Canada and that is why you stay inside a lot. Or was that because of the ten foot snows and -100 degree weather?
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