Digital BW, The Print

> 1. Does anyone know how OEM ink costs are compared with the HP 95 
> cart? (It's breaking the bank at present.) I could put Eboni in the 
> black position, which would make it cheaper.

Here in Norway OEM inks for the 2100 will break the bank too... And then
some. A new set of Epson cartridges costs me around $150 US dollars.

Fortunately I refill my own cartridges, so I haven't had to buy OEM 
carts for well over a year. I use 4oz bottles from MIS and each bottle 
is good for 10-12 cartride refills, which means the cost comes down to 
almost nothing.

It takes some work preparing the Epson cartridges for refilling, but 
once prepared they will last practically forever and the refill itself 
takes less than one hour for all seven cartridges. You could use a CFS 
and skip the refilling entirely, but I like to have the freedom of 
switching between different inksets and testing new inks.

MIS has promised some high quality refill friendly 2100 cartridges for 
some time now, but so far thay haven't appeared. I understand they're 
having some problems with their chinese supplier, which is why we are 
still waiting.

You have two choices regarding inksets from MIS. Either their 
Ultrachrome quivalent inkset which matches the colors of the Epson inks 
very well and won't require any reprofiling, or the UT7 inkset which is 
BW only.

Their Ultrachrome equivalent inkset give you beautiful BW prints either 
using BO with the Eboni black, or full grayscales using QTR. In fact I'd 
say the quality is almost as good as with the UT7 inks. It's mostly a 
matter of whether you want that last 5% increase in quality or not. 
There really isn't that big a difference. Highlights are a little 
smoother with UT7, and if you look at the prints with a loupe you won't 
see colored dots.

Of course, I like that last little bit of quality, so I'm still using 
with the UT7's :)

> 2. Is there any rip that enables you to print only with Black and 
> Light Black? It always seemed curious that Epson didn't offer that 
> option.

Yes, QTR will do that, although you'll have to add some cyan and magenta 
to the mix to cool down the warm brown tone of the light black. There 
are already many good profiles available for the most commonly used papers.

> Secondly, does the smaller droplet size of the 21/2200 printer's 
> replacement model mean that Black Only printing will now be much 
> better than before?

Probably, but I understand some of their newer models don't have a BO 
mode in their drivers, which would mean you're actually worse off than 
with a 2100. Nobody has confirmed this with their latest model though, 
but you better check that carefully before buying.

I'd actually recommend not using the latest model. It will take a while 
before third party inksets appears, and meanwhile you'll be forced to 
pay outrageous prices for OEM inks. The 2100 already has many 
established workflows and inksets available, and a large community of 
users ready to help you. With the new printers you're mostly on your own 
until everybody catches up.

--
Daniel Staver
http://daniel.staver.no