My company currently uses an ALPS MD-1300 Microdry Printer. The quality is not as great as it used to be, and a 4-pack of replacement cartridges is $30! They run out too quickly to pay that much. Also, the printer is really slow, although that is not as much of an issue. The printer was discontinued. Since we bought it in 2001, I figured that today’s technology would be better quality and even lower priced.
So I would appreciate your knowledge on color printers. We need photo-quality, and obviously cost is an issue. The reason this ALPS printer has such expensive cartridges is because they don’t make them any more (used to be $7 per 4-pack).
What do you have? Are you happy with it? I am interested in laser printers, although I know they cost a pretty penny. My impression is that you can get good inkjets, but you have to buy expensive paper for it to look good, and the ink runs out quickly, and cartridges are equally expensive.
We print aerial photographs and regular photographs all the time to get investors interested in financing real estate.
All of your recommendations are greatly appreciated!
We have an HP Laserjet 8500 DN that we bought back in 1999 for about $8,400. Seems to work just fine. Printing on plain bond paper is probably going to get you iffy results on most printers. You are also going to have to buy toner cartridges for a laser printer, and they’re expensive as well.
I work in a photolab and we have a pair of Sony printers. IIRC the process they use is called dye-sublimation or thermal printing. It uses a paper that looks and feels like real photo paper and an ink ribbon. These printers make photographic quality photos, which I think is what you really want for your buisness. You’ll be handing your investors a PHOTOGRAPH of the land instead of a PICTURE.
If investing in a printer, paper, and ink/ribbons is too much. Ask around at ‘local’ photolabs (ie not the drug store and not the 'Marts). Most labs now have the ability to print from digital media and should be able to work out a favorable arrangement for you.
It’s a shame your not in NE Ohio, my boss would be ecstatic if managed to bring in a new real estate client.
I have a Epson Stylus Photo 960. It’s a six color inkjet and uses 8 1/2 inch wide paper. Using Epson paper it will make prints that are indistinguishable from lab prints. At normal viewing distances of course. It replaced an Epson Photo Stylus 750 which served me well for several years, but cartridges became a little hard to find. The 960 sells for about $320 U.S. The 960 uses seperate ink tanks for each color. This means you only replace the one that’s empty, rather than discard ink you can still use.
Epson makes several printers that will handle wider paper, but be prepared to bring a bigger checkbook to the table.
You can visit the DC Resource web site at www.dcresource.com and read the postings on the printer forum.
I think you’re going to find replacement ink/toner expensive across the board. Every time I have to buy the stuff I am shocked at the cost. Of particular note was an HP-8500DN (I think that’s what it was) printer I supported. It cost around $1,200 to fill the thing with toner (each color cartridge was around $300+). Granted this was a high volume color printer but still…
Good photo paper is likewise expensive usually costing more than $0.07/sheet. Transparencies cost more than $0.75/sheet. That may not sound like much but it adds-up fast.
Even black & white toner costs a lot so this might just beone of those things you have to face. I do not know for certain but I suspect printer manufacturers make slim margins on the sale of the printer and get their profits on supplies which is part of the reason the costs are so high.