#DeskjetC Review
16 messages in this thread
Went to Computerland (what a farce that place is) and got a look at the
Deskjet C. Well, I'm not sure I'd pay an extra 300 smackers for the color.
Leaving the black cartridge out during color printing was a big poopoo on
their part. Oh yes, nice sharp text, little tiny colored numbers, must be
like a 4 point font, printed very nicely in Cyan ink but the overall print
was very soft. Desperately needs the black in there. Very different than
the Paintjet output. The print I got was on some kind of laser paper very
smooth which did not help the color. Considering that they are aiming this
printer at the low end corporate crowd, well its O.K but for color work it
isn't as nearly as good as the Paintjet. Maybe you could separate it and
rerun it but I'm sure it wouldn't register. Sigh.. I guess I was expecting
too much.
Margaret,
Suprisingly, a Deskjet DOES register very well for a second pass. Just
print the same thing twice (text) on the same page to test it. Do you mean
that you must remove the black cart to do color printing? Sheesh, I guess
I know their target market. Just a whole bunch of charts with nice bright
bars and pie slices.
….Mark
Well then maybe with a Postscript soft emulator, there is some hope. Yes,
you take the black cartridge out and put the CYM one in. Pretty stupid,
they almost had it right! Makes washed out pie charts too.
The DeskjetC a printer for the rest of THEM! P^)
….Mark
P.S. I still love my old original Deskjet.
Now now. I've seen some pretty good stuff on the Deskjet C so far (all on
'other' computers). I think that it will still end up being the (budget)
color printer of choice on the Amiga. HP tech support recommends that you
use the PJ paper to print on to get the most intense output, so maybe that
was the problem? (or maybe it's just not as intense as the PJ? Frankly,
while I loved the PJ output, getting the correct color balance was murder
at times!).
–jp–seattle–
Okay, okay. Maybe I jumped to a conclusion. No, maybe I was just being a
little silly. I have used the DJ (old one) with color ink in the carts and
the results were decent. It DOES depend tremendously on the paper that is
used and even more so with color inks. I have yet to see the real Deskjet
C. A real driver for the Amiga needs to be made as well.
….Mark
John:
I was all set to run out and spend more money than I can really afford
right now on upgrading my DJ to the C model, but today I found a set of
Inkmon inks that I'd bought a while ago, and started playing with them.
After a while of setting up the cartridges, and playing with my preferences
settings, I'm probably just going to keep the three color cartridges aside
now for color, and keep my DJ500, as I don't think I'll be doing that much
color (heck, that's why I sold my original PaintJet), and the upgrade $$$
can be used for better things (like a few more helicopter lessons!! :> ). I
was really surprised at the quality available using the three ink cartridge
method! (I found that doing CYMK 4 color seemed to soak the paper too much,
but that the three color was more acceptable).
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
Hmmmm…. I was in BizMart today, and they were demoing the Mac version of
the Desk Jet-C. The color images were great! Text was soft with the color
cartridge, but about the same as the Desk Jet with the Black cartridge
installed. Wonder if the Mac oriented machine is a little better, the Mac
drivers are better, or if the machine I saw was a little better out of the
box?
– via Whap!
Depends on the PAPER not the version of the machine.
Ben: Leigh's Computers
I saw it demoed on a MacII so I really was looking at a Deskwriter C. I am
comparing the color output to the Paintjet, we'll it does not measure up.
You need the black in there but the pricey clay-coated paper makes a
difference too. The Paintjet is very vibrant except for the fact that it is
murder on pastels.
Margaret,
a possible workaround would be to do a CYMK separation rather than a
CYM, and print the image in two passes, switching to the black cartridge
for the second pass. As someone pointed out, the Deskjet has excellent
registration on multiple passes. More work, sure; but you do get 3 times
the spatial resolution. Isn't that worth the effort? Just wondering.
Blaq! – via Whap!
Yes, I thought of that while I was looking at the printer at Computerbland.
Too bad they didn't break out the CYM cartridges as it is such a waste when
you run out of one color and have ink in the rest of the cartridge. Does
anybody make refills for these? Also I'd like to see the color on the
clay-coated paper. They sell it as sheets as an accessory item or I guess
you could just by Paintjet paper.
Margaret, the 'color' paper for the Deskjet500C is the same as the paper
for the PaintJet. The paper has changed since I last purchased it (@ 1.5
yrs ago); it's now less 'clayish' and has a better feel to it. Seems to
have the same color fidelity, though.
The worst thing about the DJ500C is the having to switch the cartridges
between black and color, unlike the PaintJet, where at least you had both
cartridges in the machine all the time. Oh well….
–jp–seattle–
The Paintjet made nasty looking fonts and such, but I never really used it
for that anyway. Are you a DeskjetC owner yet? One thing I do like about
the Paintjet which I sure the Deskjet can do is to make black and white
textile schematics (for lack of a better way to explain it). I could then
photocopy them or scan them on other machines and they really came out
well. No banding etc.
Could I use this printer to transfer images to t-shirts? Is there some
kind of paper I could print on in full color and just iron that to a
t-shirt? I don't imagine a t-shirt would feed too well into the DeskJet C.
<g>
>>DonovaN
Blaq –
> a possible workaround would be to do a CYMK separation rather than a
> CYM, and print the image in two passes, switching to the black cartridge
> for the second pass.
How would you get the C, Y, and M separations to print out at the same
time?
. . . . . JimDoc