Trying to find a good replacement for my wife's Epson C80 which is now
barely printing text after replacing all cartridges.

Looking for a basic color printer with good text capability and OK
color/photo printing.

Read positive reports on the HP 5940 in MacWorld.

Interested in any users input on that printer or other suggestions.

Thank you.

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Please send email to: nwhiii at yahoo dot com

Norm wrote:
Probably not what you want to hear, but these two requirements are sort
of in conflict with each other. What makes a good black-on-white text
printer is not what makes a good colour photo printer, and vice-versa.

Inkjets are very expensive to run (in terms of cost-per-page) and black
text will use up black ink faster than the other colours. Inkjets do
not make the clearest and most even text.

At the same time, inkjets are fine for the occasional photo, but even
amateur photogs will have a hard time making really nice photos. I
suppose your standard 3x5 or 5x7s will be ok.

The key here is that make sure you get a model with a separate cartridge
for black (at the very least). The problem with them eventually
breaking down, and having to tweak the cartridges, heads and settings is
still a problem (though they are getting better). Probably the only
thing worse than imposing a heavy duty cycle on an average inkjet is
imposing too small of a duty cycle; those jets will gum up in a hurry if
you let them sit too long.

If it was me, I'd just go for two printers. A black-and-white laser
printer (which will print for pennies per sheet) for text and a 4- or
5-colour dye-sublimation printer for photos. This will give you prints
that rival your local photo printing kiosk, and keep the overall costs
down to print text. Of course, this is not always desirable or possible.