What all in one printer would you guys recommend?

[imported_K3N]

im looking to get one for around 100-150$. I'd like one that can last long, cant be a HP brand, and maybe one that can let people use third party/has cheaper cartridges. anyone also know how important dpi is?

 

[Paperdoc]

dpi is important mainly for photo printing. At 300 dpi on plain paper of even proper ink jet paper you will have plenty of fine detail for text and staight line art, but not really good enough for continuous-tone grey scale or color work. But using high-gloss paper for good photos, or even for simple black-and-white (grey scale) with fine tonal gradations, 600 dpi will look much better. I'm not at all sure you will see the difference above that at, say, 1200 dpi. The ones that run 720 dpi will look similar to 600 dpi.

Many printers now put a tiny chip into each ink cartridge and the printer keeps track of which one is installed and when it goes empty. They refuse to use one they "know" is empty, even if refilled. I have a Canon Pixma MP500 that works that way. There are ink jet cartidge refillers who will sell you replacement cartridges for my machine along with instructions how to fool it. Basically, I would have to swap the chip from an old empty cartridge into a new refilled one, and then the nprinter still thinks it is empty. But there is a way to tell my printer to ignore all that and just get down to printing even though it thinks it has an empty cartridge.

As an alternative, I bought some cartridges from a company that claims they have included in their units a reprogrammed chip that make my printer think all is well, no worries! But I have not used them yet.

When you say "All in One", be aware there are 3-in-1 and 4-in-1 units. 3-in-1's will do scanning, copying and printing. 4-in-1's add the ability to send and receive FAXes directly from the printer when connected to a phone line, just like a stand-alone FAX machine, whether the computer is running or not. These latter units also will alow you to send a FAX from the computer through the printer's FAX facilities. My own choice, however, was to buy a 3-in-1 and an internal FAX Modem card in a PCI slot. I rarely need to receive a FAX (but that could be made to work with a bit of preparation), and I send FAXes infrequently. When I want to send a FAX, I can use the scanner function and then send it as a separate operation. For me that was cheaper and simpler than finding a 4-in-1 that had the high-quality photo printing I wanted.

 

[Blain]

Canon Pixma MX700 @ $129.98 after rebate.