Can there be life without a Printer?
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Some years ago I remember inviting one of the new guys at church to join in on the rotation for mowing the church lawn. He cocked an eyebrow and asked, “Is that the kind of lawnmower that evokes un-Christian thoughts?” Well, that has been my opinion of printers for as long as I have been aware of their existence.
Why do we even need printers?
As much as I would like to do away with the wretched devices altogether, most of us can’t cut the paper habit cold-turkey.
In fact, a means of generating an attractive well finished printed document will probably always be a critical component of any paperless home. Think about the many items we capture or scan in that we might wish to print again…
- Short cheat sheets and checklists
- Recipes
- Receipts, for the one time when you need to provide a hard copy
- Sheet music
- Archived meeting minutes or reports
- And, of course, Photographs
Ditch the Photo Printer
I must admit that the day I rid myself of my Epson Photo 870, I did so in a very undignified fashion. It was quite satisfying. Besides the whole cheap-printer/expensive-ink scam problem, the print head nozzles always clog. Then you paint the air blue for an hour as you attempt to clean the heads, wasting more precious ink in the process. As far as I know (or care, for that matter), unless you print loads of photos on a daily basis, your print head will clog. It’s inevitable.
In my opinion, unless you are an artsy photo type who prints and tweaks things all day long, the best photo printer is … no printer.
These days, I do all of my photo printing via Winkflash.
It’s cheaper than buying the supplies for the printer, looks just as good, is more permanent (the photos are on real photo paper), and doesn’t cause aggravation.
When I was printing my own photos, I had to replace the 8×10 picture of Stonehenge that I keep in my office every year or so, as the inks would yellow quickly as air seeped in around the edges. My current copy, printed by Winkflash, has been going for four or five years.
For a cost comparison, a couple of weeks ago I placed the following order:
Qty Size Unit Price Price
3 4x6 Matte $0.08 $0.24
5 5x7 Matte $0.25 $1.25
1 8x10 Matte $1.49 $1.49
Subtotal $2.98
Shipping $0.89
Total $3.87
I only had the 4×6 prints done because there was a checkbox next to the 5×7’s for it and they only cost 8 cents each.
Shipping was a flat-rate 89 cents, all you can eat.
I ordered them on Thursday and they came on Monday. As a bonus, they don’t jack up the prices when you place large orders. I have printed sets of 200-300 4×6 prints at times and they did them at the same rate. Amazing.
Other Photo Options
There are dozens of online printing services available. They distinguish themselves in the following areas:
- Ease of use
- Quality of paper
- Quality of ink
- Overall print quality
- Speed of Delivery
- Price
- Shipping cost
- Add-ons (albums and calenders, for example)
If you wish, you can even print your photos online and pick them up at Walgreens in an hour!
Note: if you print online to a brick-and-mortar store, make sure they really are printing your photos on site and that the quality is good. Some years ago I tried a local retailer’s online photo service, only to find out that I needed to go to the store in a week to pick up the photos. Why bother.
Here’s a couple of sites that compare the different online services (they sell stuff too—take their reviews with a grain of salt).
Pick the service that best fits you
I usually have all of my photos printed by Winkflash because they are remarkably cheap and I am satisfied with the quality. But, I print my fancy-schmancy photo albums of our vacations directly from Apple iPhoto, at a substantially higher cost.
A friend showed me one of the photo albums printed from Winkflash, and we laid it alongside an album I had ordered through iPhoto: the print quality was substantially better in the more expensive album. Consequently, I am willing to pay a premium for Apple to print the album because it is extremely convenient to create the album in iPhoto and the quality is top-notch.
Photo printing is pretty inexpensive, so go ahead and try a few of the services. Print the same shot if you want, so you can compare finishes and quality.
By the way, I seem to recall talk that Apple used MyPublisher to print their albums. I don’t know if this is still true, but I have albums from iPhoto and from MyPublisher and they are identical with the exception of the themes and Apple logo. They are both quite good, though MyPublisher is cheaper and it works on the PC!
To be continued…
