Help me find a new Printer

[Livy]

im looking to buy a new printer and decided to get an all in one.
the criteria im looking at is that it has to have a multi ink system,
and inks have to be cheap, or compatibles availible.

ive narrowed down to a few, what do you think.
Epson Stylus Photo RX520
Brother DCP315CN
Canon Pixma MP510
Which of these seem the best, and should i steer clear of the brother?
they will mainly be used for uni work, and occasional photo printing.

cheers.

[lynx]

At one time I would have suggested staying away from the Epson if you wanted original carts. However, they seem to have learnt the lesson that people aren't prepared to put up with extortionate prices.

If you want original carts, the Brother and Epson work out at about the same cost, but the Canon isn't far behind.

If you are prepared to put up with compatible carts then again the Brother and Epson work out at roughly the same cost, but I haven't seen any compatibles for the Canon so that one would work out much more expensive. If you don't mind getting messy you can top up the ink tank on the Canon and that makes it the cheapest to run.

People I know who have the Epson say they haven't had a problem with them, and I know a professional photographer who uses an Epson, not that model though.

Can't see why you should discount the Brother though, IMO flatbed printers tend to give a better output. The network connectivity would be a big plus for me too.

[Livy]

the thing with the brother was that not really heard much about them,
and cant really find much feedback about them either whether there any good or not.
yeah the network connectvity seemed good, and the inbuilt card reader works like a ftp server over the network, so could also use it for easy file access away from home.
i was planning on using compatible inks anyway and had been judging prices on ebay and there isnt really alot between them for prices, although the brother is about £20 cheaper than the canon to buy. and the epson is a little more again.

[Damnatory]

A little while back I abandoned my Lexmarks printers for Epson solely on the basis of cheap ink. I bought a Epson R220, and can personally vouch for their increase in quality printers over the last few years!

Plus I picked up 21 carts (6 black, 3 of the other colors) on eBay for about as much as I payed for ONE cart on a lexmark. 21 carts = $35

[Chewie]

I've been using Epson since those heady days of the Stylus Color 400.
The unfortunate thing is that the Stylus Color 400 I owned was perhaps the only Epson item worth the money paid.

The 400's replacement was a C40+ which was replaced twice within the 1-year warranty period; first because the print heads wouldn't unblock and then because it was dumping blotches of ink all over the paper.

When I stupidly lost a spring while cleaning the print head last year I even more stupidly bought an RX425 (on offer at PC World) that I needed to run the print head cleaning utility on at least twice on every set of cartridges... including the ones that came in the box with the printer.
After contacting Epson and having their approved repair centre look at it they told me that all it needed was the head cleaned. They wouldn't venture and explanation as to why the head needed cleaning so often.
The carts had run out and I had to buy a new set on the way home. When I installed my new £30 Epson carts, what do you think was the first thing I needed to do? Yep, clean the print head.

Epson finally agreed to swap out the unit under warranty (it was less than three months old) and I got a spangly set of carts to go with it.
The print head needed cleaning before they had run out though, and that was when I decided to stop using original Epson carts.

When I left the wife the printer came with me and she bought the Brother DCP115.
It looks perfectly OK to me, prints fine and hasn't given a problematical moment in the 11 months since purchase.

Bottom line?
Epsons give great quality. Their IE plugin means now you can print web pages without losing the whole of the right hand side.
If you don't mind buying a set of (re-usable) cleaning carts then £2 per compatible cart from a few online stores makes it unbeatable.
On the other hand, if you baulk at pissing around with carts and just want it to do what you tell it without fuss, get the Brother.

[Livy]

seems like a good argument to me, yeah i expect it to do exactly as its told and get on with it. i was swaying towards the epson as reading some info on canon compatibles on ebay you have to swap some chip over to them from your original cartridges. seems like to much bother to me.
i just found out my mate from uni has just bought the brother one, so will see what he thinks of it.