General question about printers and cartridges

[Bill Gates Jr.]

My older HP printers had the print nozzle built into the cartridge. Rarely had a problem with clogging. I bought a wireless EpsonWF-3640 which (I later found out) has the print nozzle built into the printer and not the cartridge. Have wasted much ink trying to clear out the stripes on the color inks. Still cannot remove everything.
Is this the new norm that all printers now have the print nozzle built into the printer? Does the new HP printers have this also?
Epson has been no help..won't buy another Epson.
I use my printer manly for printing text in black maybe twice a week, so that may increase the clogging problem. But I would also like to print color pics occasionally.
Any suggestions?

 

[chscag]

You need to realize that today's ink jet printers are built cheaply and sold cheaply. The profit for companies who make and sell them is in the consumables. $100 to $125 for a nice looking ink jet printer that also scans and acts as a copier, then, only to find out that replacing the color ink cartridges will cost you $60 a whack.

Yes, there are more expensive printers that you can buy - fancier and faster - but with the same drawbacks. It's less expensive to place the print nozzle as part of the printer head and to slap 4 cartridges in a removable tray. I do most of my printing in B&W and still use a HP LaserJet printer for my work. There are occasions where I need color and I have an older Epson wireless that I got for free from Apple (as part of a promotion) that still works great.

If you do lots of color work, it may pay in the long haul to buy a medium priced color laser printer. Although the laser cartridges are expensive to replace, they last for several years as long as you're not publishing magazines or something like that.

 

[harryb2448]

That occasionally business is where the problem occurs with the ink going gunky and blocking nozzles and requiring cleaning often when you go to use colour.

If you are not going to buy an Epson, steer clear of Lexmark. They are worse.

 

[lclev]

I have purchases inkjet printers for home use including HP, Epson and Canon. Inevitably they all died due to clogged print heads. They would dry out because we did not use it enough. I looked into a color laser printer and read all kinds of information especially that replacing one of the cartridges would be almost as much as the cost of a new printer. BUT they do not dry out and clog up. So I bought an HP LaserJet Pro 400. It was a soon to be discontinued model and it is rather large in size, but I got it worth the money and I have had it over a year now. It still prints beautifully. I will never go back to inkjet for home use. When this one needs new cartridges I will replace it with whatever is the best option at the time.

Lisa