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My first question - why? Why are inkjets so advanced in this regard and laser printers suffering and being almost virtually the same cost? Is laser meant for heavy-duty print jobs in terms of clerical and inkjets just developed on trying to get high quality press photos in the home? Just intrigues me from a learning standpoint and hope anyone wise here can provide me an explanation as to the different development cycles of inkjets.
There are several reasons why more R&D has gone into inkjets for photographic printing:
I don't think I have ever seen a color laser printer that did more than CMYK, whereas I have seen inkjet printers with 12 colors. It gets really complicated with each additional color you add to a laser, especially aligning (registering) each of the colors. Laser is more like offset printing, where each color is added one after the other. There are difficulties getting smooth gradients with laser too. And many other reasons that limit the advancement of lasers for photographic printing, including resolution.
Inkjet printers aren't just for 'high quality press photos in the home'. The highest end custom photo labs use inkjet technology. Large volume snapshot printers like wallmark are moving to dry lab (inkjet) instead of wet chem processes (when they aren't closing down the photo dept).
Question 2: I am looking for a printer that handles photos and mostly black and white prints. I am looking towards R3000 or R3880 only to find out these amazing printers have been discontinued! Now I'm not sure what P600 and P800 are supposed to effectively replace....but if anyone can clarify for me I'd appreciate it.
The SureColor P600 replaces the R3000 and the SC P800 replaces the Pro 3880.
P600 vs P800 makes little sense to me. P600 prints at a maximum dpi of 5760 x 1440 dpi (with no 2860x1440dpi option) whereas the more expensive P800 only at 2880x1440 dpi with no 5760x1440 option. Uhm....am I missing something here? Why does the lesser expensive P600 have a higher dpi capability? And which one should I get? I was leaning towards the R3880 INITIALLY but now it seems I want the P600 (though I was aiming for P800 before this initially). Now I'm not sure at all and totally lost.
It was the same with the R3000 vs the Pro 3880, the R3000 had a higher available resolution. It isn't all about output resolution. I rarely print at 2880 dpi either of my printers, most usually at 1440 dpi. On the higher quality fine art papers I usually print with, 2880 dpi produces worse results than 1440. The resulting resolution on the paper is not as good.
The P600 is limited to 13" paper widths, the P800 is a 17" (A2) printer.
The P800 has larger capacity 80 ml cartridges, which translates to lower ink costs per unit volume.
There are lots more things to consider between the two.
Brian A