Our New Printer is... so Small!
Jan. 29th, 2026 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerRecently I decided it's time to replace our printer. The cost of ink, given the alacrity with which it consumes it, has long been a sore point. But what made me decide to replace old with new is that one of the heads is clogged. I dug up instructions to go through a software driven head-cleaning process. It didn't work, even trying it 3 times as recommended by the manual.
The next thing to try would have been to physically remove the heads and give them a bath in certain household chemicals. I decided the effort wasn't worth the risk that the parts wouldn't all go neatly back together again. I mean, this is a precision device that needs to align to one one-thousandth of an inch. I'm not going to soak it like it's a sore toe.
Besides, the old printer had a decent run. A search through my old blogs on LiveJournal shows that I bought it 11 years ago.
The new printer arrived today. When you look at the new printer (top) compared to the old printer you might wonder, "What is this, a printer for ants?"
It's actually a regular sized printer. It prints US letter/A4 paper. It only looks tiny because my older printer is a behemoth. That PIXMA PRO-100 prints media up to 13"x19"/A3+.
My decision to downsize was carefully considered. I bought that huge printer 11 years ago expecting that I'd print large format photographs from my digital photography. Alas I never printed anything larger than a 5"x7"— or a sheet of three 3x5s. Partly that's because as the digital photography space has developed (hah) the notion of "Oh, I've got to print my photos to show them off!" has fallen by the wayside. Plus, as expensive as the inks and media are to print great large format photos, not to mention the hardware to mount and/or frame them for display, it makes more sense to print them through a professional service that specializes in such things and offers options not available to home enthusiasts, like printing to canvas or aluminum sheets.
So I bought a standard page sized printer for regular printing and small photos. I figure if/when I get around to wanting something done at 13"x19" (or bigger!) I'll use an online service for it.
While I bought an inexpensive printer, I didn't buy a cheapshit one. I shopped carefully for one that wouldn't cost to much to buy or operate but could still turn out vivid photographs. Part of that equation, of course, is having good paper for photographic printing— which I have. The other part is choosing a printer with the right gamut of inks. The Canon TS702a I landed on is a 5 ink printer. That's fewer than the 8 inks my old printer had, and only half as many as the ten inks the top-of-the-line printers are now configured for. But I think it'll do fine. And the few test prints I tried when I set it up today look fine— both for text and for images.
The next thing to try would have been to physically remove the heads and give them a bath in certain household chemicals. I decided the effort wasn't worth the risk that the parts wouldn't all go neatly back together again. I mean, this is a precision device that needs to align to one one-thousandth of an inch. I'm not going to soak it like it's a sore toe.
Besides, the old printer had a decent run. A search through my old blogs on LiveJournal shows that I bought it 11 years ago.
The new printer arrived today. When you look at the new printer (top) compared to the old printer you might wonder, "What is this, a printer for ants?"
It's actually a regular sized printer. It prints US letter/A4 paper. It only looks tiny because my older printer is a behemoth. That PIXMA PRO-100 prints media up to 13"x19"/A3+.
My decision to downsize was carefully considered. I bought that huge printer 11 years ago expecting that I'd print large format photographs from my digital photography. Alas I never printed anything larger than a 5"x7"— or a sheet of three 3x5s. Partly that's because as the digital photography space has developed (hah) the notion of "Oh, I've got to print my photos to show them off!" has fallen by the wayside. Plus, as expensive as the inks and media are to print great large format photos, not to mention the hardware to mount and/or frame them for display, it makes more sense to print them through a professional service that specializes in such things and offers options not available to home enthusiasts, like printing to canvas or aluminum sheets.
So I bought a standard page sized printer for regular printing and small photos. I figure if/when I get around to wanting something done at 13"x19" (or bigger!) I'll use an online service for it.
While I bought an inexpensive printer, I didn't buy a cheapshit one. I shopped carefully for one that wouldn't cost to much to buy or operate but could still turn out vivid photographs. Part of that equation, of course, is having good paper for photographic printing— which I have. The other part is choosing a printer with the right gamut of inks. The Canon TS702a I landed on is a 5 ink printer. That's fewer than the 8 inks my old printer had, and only half as many as the ten inks the top-of-the-line printers are now configured for. But I think it'll do fine. And the few test prints I tried when I set it up today look fine— both for text and for images.
