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We see no point in using expensive color ink cartridges to print on cheap paper.
   technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Lexmark Z11 color printer costs only $49 with a rebate and prints beautifully


Nov. 7, 1999

Phillip Greenspun's outstanding photo essay on the Grand Canyon, with photos perfect for viewing and printing.

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©1999, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©1999, The Syracuse Newspapers

   When we wanted to make prints of the photos we took along the Amazon River last May, my wife, Nancy, and I couldn't take the negatives to the drug store to get them processed.
   We had hundreds of photos but not a single negative. They were all digital pictures, taken with our new JVC digital camera. It's a digital camcorder that doubles as a digital still camera, and some of the photos we took are very good.
   Sooner or later, everyone who has a digital camera -- a camera that takes pictures that are stored in a form computers can use, in other words -- faces the same problem: You can't show your pictures to the neighbors or to the folks at the office unless you print them out. And that old black-and-white printer just won't do. You need a color printer -- a good color printer.
   So we started looking around. We wanted a good ink jet printer, one that could produce prints as good as photographs using glossy photo paper, and we were willing to pay up to $300. We found what we wanted, although the price was 'way off our goal.
   We paid $49.
   The printer is a Lexmark Z11. Lexmark was selling the Z11 for $99 and offered a $50 rebate. The rebate is still valid, and you should be able to find the same kind of deal we got if you shop around. (We found it at a local store, but use www.pricewatch.com to search the Web if you don't see it for sale locally.)
   A quick note about rebates: They're a pain, and nobody likes them. More specifically, Lexmark has another rebate for the Z11 printer that is dumber than dumb -- the printer is basically free if you agree to sign up for the rest of your life with the world's worst Internet provider, that kind of thing -- so it's not hard to find examples of rebates that make you wonder what's happened to common sense.
   But common sense also tells you that $49 is less than $99, so take advantage of the regular rebate. You can get more information on Lexmark's rebates from www.lexmark.com.
   Cheap is one thing. How about quality?
   Lexmark rates the Z11 at 1,200 dots per inch. That's a measure of printer resolution, or how many separate picture elements it can pack into an area. Older color ink jet printers managed 300 dots per inch, so the Z11 ranks high compared to older designs. It's also about as high in resolution as any printer you can find these days.
   Printing quality, however, depends a lot on the paper you use. At first we tried using more-or-less normal ink jet paper from the stack we keep on hand for our black-and-white Hewlett Packard Deskjet and were ready to bring the printer back to the store. Colors were all washed out and nothing looked black. There was no life to the pictures.
   I trudged out and bought four different packs of paper designed for color printing to see if they made a difference. We were amazed. We got true photo quality printing from Hammermill JetPrint Photo paper, which cost us about 80 cents a sheet. We got equally good results in most ways from Hammermill JetPrint Ultra Gloss paper, which, despite the name, is less glossy (less shiny) than JetPrint Photo paper. The Ultra Gloss paper seems to hold the ink better, so try them both to see which you like. The Ultra Gloss paper cost about the same as JetPrint Photo paper.
   The other brands I tried did a poor job. They cost about half as much but didn't produce prints that looked like photographs. Because color ink jet cartridges cost a lot -- $32 or more for a single Z11 cartridge, which prints about 50 to 60 pages at most -- we made two decisions right away. First, we use our trusty and inexpensive black-and-white Deskjet for all normal printing. (Our computers are networked, so any PC can print to any printer.) Second, we see no point in using expensive color ink cartridges to print on cheap paper. We use Hammermill JetPrint Photo for all our pictures.
   It was fun comparing different paper. I hadn't realized how minor differences can be. Use the link at the top of this article to download some excellent digital photos to use as test images. Please note that they are quite large and may take a long time to download.