Digital BW, The Print

Hi Jim,
it's a little early for me to know how much consumables are going to 
be. Having had the printer a week now and printing about 20 A5 prints 
the ink levels as shown in the HP software have dropped about a 
third. It's always hard to be accurate with those kind of meters, but 
I feel it's pretty good. Replacement grey cartridges are about $30 
from internet suppliers and the paper I have found to suit me best 
(Tetenal semi matte) runs about a dollar a sheet for A4. This 
internet supplier is promising a Hp 59 replacement cartridge soon...  
http://inkjetsaver.com/

I don't think inkjet printing is ever going to be inexpensive!!

Today for the first time ever I tried out a Fuji Frontier print 
service run by a local store. Got them to print a variety of things 
including the black and white photos I used for the Hp 7660 tests. 
All the colour ones were excellent. As everything is on glossy paper 
I'm not mad about the b&w shots. They have a cool blue look and I 
suspect a touch of green in certain lighting conditions. The Hp gives 
a better result on glossy using hp paper and I really can't praise 
the quality on the Tetenal enough. It is for my money the best A4 b&w 
printer I have used. By the way I thought the Frontier prints were 
excellent value got 40 prints for $15 and it only took 15 minutes.

With my epson 1290 I use non branded cartridges made in China and 
they perform just as well as Epson's inks for about a third of the 
price. I use Epson premium semi gloss as my paper of choice. My 1160 
has bulk cis inks (quadtone) from MIS. The 1160 has been in use about 
a year and I'm always reading about problems, but haven't had any 
yet. I have been considering putting a cfs onto the 1290 for colour 
work.

Hope I have been of some help to you Jim. Have a look at this site...
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/index.html

they have a very in depth review of the Hp 7960. They have lots of 
stuff on its b&W printing capabilities.  Remember it has basically 
the same printing engine as the 7660 for B&W. I went for the 7660 on 
price. Can't spend all my money on printing...need something for 
camera equipement too :-)

Cheers,
Paul.


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, JimD 
<rasterdogs@c...> wrote:
> Paul,
> Have you formed an opinion about ink usage for B/W with your
> 7660? Do you have an impression about how consumable expenses
> with the HP might compare to your Epson inkjets?
> 
> In the info I've found on the web, ink cost gets mentioned
> fairly often with regards to the 7660/7960. I get the sense though,
> that those objections may be coming from folks who may not
> have much experience printing photos on inkjets.
> 
> Doing color on my 1270 I've found the cost for Epson
> ink and paper to be reasonably tolerable. Doing B/W on
> my 1160 I've wasted a fair amount of ink and paper clearing
> clogs and doing various types of tests. The cost of fussing
> with B/W has been priceless.
> 
> Cheers,
> JimD