is this printer any good?

[eshort]

Opinions please re: Canon Bubblejet model 4300---have a chance to pik one up used for about $20...unit seems to be very clean and printed test page just fine! I will need the driverbut assume driver shld be in win98SE?

tx

[highrisemech]

Sure the Cannon may work, but ink cartridges are close to $40.00 or $50.00
for a black and color. Do your self a favor buy a new HP on sale at like Best Buys, I bought one new for $79.00 plus a $30.00 rebate and it put the Cannon that I was using for two years to shame.

[morriswindgate]

Canons are fine printers and unlike HPs you can pick up aftermarket ink cartridges for $2.99 for black and $3.99 for color. The weakness on that range of canons is that they use seperate printheads and the ink is just tanks. Epsons also have aftermarket cartridges available cheap. Lexmark and HP do not.

http://www.store.yahoo.com/lmcomp/

[highrisemech]

AAhhh but alas the aftermaket cartridges tend to clog the ink head up even more so, been there and tried that. Once the ink head is clogged you gotta get a new one wich is only sold with the black and color ink cartrige the price for this in my area is right around $40.00 . This is the beauty of an HP you buy a replacement ink cartridge it comes with a new print head.

[audiyoda]

I've been buying aftermarket ink for my Epson and my wife's Canon for a year or so now -- never had a problem. Of course I clean my nozzles every month or so -- maintaining a printer is paramount to a successful college career.

The only time we've had problems are with those stinking refillable systems. My wife decided that might be cool -- she found out otherwise.

-Craig

[HAL9000]

You're a lucky man then Craig. I've seen way too many failures with Canons where somebody has either tried to refill or use a third party cartridge. It usually ends with either clogged print heads or the entire inside of the printer with ink all over the place. Just a personal opinion of mine, I wouldn't touch a Canon or Epson printer, it's HP all the way.

[highrisemech]

Audiyoda out of curiosity how do you clean your ink nozzles.
My old Cannon would jam up all the time with third part ink cartridges.
It amazes me that somebody is actually getting somewhere with one of these.

[Jenni]

My brother-in-law had a BJC-4200 (and I'm not sure what the difference is, could be night and day for all I know) and I wasn't impressed with it at all. Color had huge "dots" compared to my HP 722. And they were constantly buying more cartridges. And the black wasn't really all that "black". I got them a HP 697 at a garage sale for $15. The output from it in "Econofast" mode looks better than the best the Canon could put out (in black, for text anyway...)!

[eshort]

brought Canon home--working fine except seems very slow and the graphics printing is very grainy even in the 360 dpi mode---but am using the generic win98se driver (has only the driver for 4200 series which I assume is very similar).

Prints text very well-black blacks, and good contrast.

will eventually buy an HP..I think these r the best frm all the reviews/commnets posted here and elsewhere..also--i dont like idea of seprate printheads (ie Canon, Epson)...