I have an Epson 1280 that prints excellent color up to 14" wide.

Hard to find the ink though. Try Staples.

I would say go for a Epson 1280 or 2200. I think they have the best print quality!

Did research before buying a printer last November .. and at the time the HP DeskJet 1220 won me over. It has served me well for dbl-sided, thick paper, and is really really quiet.

I think the cartidgfes for the Canon are pricey and hard to find in your typical office supply store. That is also something worth looking at.

We have had two epsons and I hate them(not the quality but the aggravation factor)... find the HP to be much more reliable, though we only have a smaller so maybe the large formats are a pain too... the worst thing about the epson is the print heads, need to be cleaned constantly and it uses tons of ink. Of course our cat also likes to use it as a bed...

I bought an HP 1220c off ebay last year for my thesis. I've printed about 800 duplex pages for several copies of my thesis. I've found it a little difficult to line up both sides (within 1/16"). This could be due to the fact that I was using pagemaker. When you find a model you want look around on ebay. You might be able to find a good deal and save a couple hundred bucks like I did.

Take a look at the colour printed by epsons and HPs. (I wouldn't bother with any other brands since you need to be sure you can find ink) The two companies colours come out a bit differently: I find the HPs to be a bit dark, some how even the light colours feel like they have some black ink in them. I love the Epson colours. HOwever, Some people see the Epson colours as oversaturated and fake feeling, and that the HP looks looks better. Whatever is your preference. See if you can see some portfolios at school and ask which company produced them to get a better idea.

I had the epson 1200 for almost four years it was a great printer so it was logical for me now to just buy the newest Epson equivalent which is the 1280. This printer is bad, the print heads get clogged easy, if you dont use it for some period of time (1 week) you have to clean them and realign them. the rollers get dirty with ink and smear ink on your prints and its very difficult to clean them. in short a nightmare.
I think that I am going to give canon a try.

epson 22oo the best.
*note: It uses 8 cardtriges but the results are insane.
But I think you could try with a 1280 very nice as well.

The Epson 2200 (for europe) 2100 (for N. America) is wickedly insane, but that is only because I am a freak about colour experimentation. Don't think that you have to put out so much money do do a decent portfolio. A 1280 found on ebay will serve you vERY well for portfolio and most other purposes.

epson 1280 cartridges uses the "evil" epson chip. which means that you can do a certain number of prints regardless if you still have some ink left in the cartridge. After the chip decides that you cant print "a quality" print with the remaining ink the printer is blocked.
Then again, you can also throw away your epson cartridges and install a Lyson Continuous Ink System. This works with the 1280, 2200 and i think that with Canon printers as well

Can I ask why you need a printer that does 11x17 when most schools limit the application portfolio size to 8.5x11?

I've been very happy with my Epson 900 - great quality prints & full bleed. I've noticed that the cheaper the epson printer is, the more expensive the ink and the faster it runs out.

Here are two reviews of the epson 1280s (1290s)
and of the 2200 (2100)

our office has the S9000. we've had it about a year. it puts out high quality prints at a reasonable speed but goes through a lot of ink quickly. The cartridges (6 individual) get pricey when you have to change the photo cyan and photo magenta every 10-12 glossy 11x17's. also, it doesn't like the store brand cartidges any better. It uses those up faster, or so it seems. also, if you leave the cartriges in the printer between uses for longer than a few weeks they tend to dry up. its messy to take them out but i ziplock ours now.

we do a lot of glossy prints but i think if you could better modulate your print quality and pair it well with a lower tooth paper you could extend the life of the ink.

I have seen epson 11x17 printers run forever, for what its worth. YMMV. my roommate has had her 1280 for years and printed thousands of 11x17 high quality prints with little problem.

I have the s9000 as well. goes through ink fast(I have never had any problem getting more at office depot). good quality, fast and quiet. 13x19 capacity as well

i wish this thread could've happened earlier. i gave up the idea of buying a printer and went to kinko's instead. i thought getting a printer is a more economical idea, but then realized the number of pages brand new ink cartridges can yield. say for 8 1/2 x 11 prints of full page color graphics and highest quality, does someone know how many pages a printer can produce before cartridges are depleted? i did the calculation based on an epson r200. it has 6 color cartridges and produces 430 pages with 5% coverage. doesn't that mean a 90-100% coverage will reduce the cartridges lives to... 20+ pages? i needed to print 180 pages and that totally busted my budget.

does anyone know how to print borderless from photoshop with an epson 1280??? heard there's a patch you can download somewhere??

I could only print 1.5 portfolios per $55 of ink cartridges on my 8.5 x 11 epson printer.

just wondering...about how much $ would you save (compared to having the portfolio professionally printed)? ...How much do these printers cost, is the quality much better?

Greengob. :are you saying there's a way to get a full bleed(8.5x11) on an 8.5x11 printer??!! cool, clue me in.

We just got a 250,000 dollar state of the art photo copier at work 300,000 if you inculde the finace charges
The damm things takes up the whole room.
Better than photo qaulity if there is such a thing.
it even make books. We had a 175,000 copier before this.
My advice go work for a big corparation print all the portfolios you want for free.

stark-manufacturer and model if you will?

Epson is now offering a $100 rebate for the 1280s making it only $300. Unfortunately I bought mine at Fry's one day before the offer was available and they would not let me exchange it to get the rebate with a new receipt. Oh well, i guess i'll stay broke

I have had the printer for a month now and the quality is amazing compared to my old HP 1115 photosmart.

well... 1280 does have borderless printing technology, but you have to do it through a crappy program. this epson sales rep told me there's a driver you can download to do borderless printing through photoshop. i haven't quiet figured it out yet.

stark, my advice would be careful with printing at ur firm. most corporate firm keeps track of the prints.... and obviously if you can caught it could lead to termination.

I've got an Espon Photo 960, got it refurbished for $200. It'll print borderless (but keep in mind that borderless means smaller prints, not 8.5x11, you need specific paper), print on rolls and has a paper cutter, and will print on CDs. So far, it's superb and was a great deal.

stark, I'd be careful printing at your firm, too. If they have a printer that is state of the art, I am sure their networking is sophisticated enough to keep track of which computers are sending what. They will know, as they have to bill the appropriate clients and keep track of the cost of printing. If you really want to use it, I'd ask if you could pay them for the prints, but I'd guess the prices would be really high (I know where I worked at a particular large firm in SM the 11x17s were $20 each, and that was years ago).

eka - having a portfolio printed professional would cost thousands, but you'd have a huge stack of them!

I recently printed about 280 11" x 17" pages from our 1280. This used up 2 black and 2 color cartridges. We tend to use no-brand cartridges. They cost aobut $10 each.
There is a driver that allows borderless printing - we've used this with no problems.
If for some reason you can't get borderless printing to work for you, the 1280 can print on up to Super A3 paper (about 13" x 19") - so you could always print on the larger paper and trim.

Hi ormolu, can you tell me what driver you used? Also could you print 8 1/2 x 11 or larger borderless from photoshop? Thanks!

check epson.com there's a driver for borderless printing for macs. not sure about pc. but it's basically a new paper selection that lets you print in minimize margin mode as well as borderless print.

What about the designjet 120? It is small enough to fit on a desk, it has a paper tray for 8.5x34 and 11x17 and you can hand feed paper sizes up to 22x34. If you got the space and you want to save money on kinko, go for the designjet 100 or 120.

I think Canon i6500 is better than Epson 1280. I have used both. The line quality is better on the Canon. Granted Epson prints images nicely but so does Canon.

I'm on a mac. I have the latest mac OSX driver from the Epson website - I think it is the only OSX one currently listed.

I have no idea what driver (if any) allows this for pcs.

When we first got the 1280 we had driver problems because Epson offered 2 separate OSX drivers - one that allowed roll feeding, borderless printing, custom paper sizes, etc., and another that allowed printer sharing/network printing. You couldn't do both at once. But more recently they have created a driver that does all of this in one - so we're happier now.

And yes, we can print 8 1/2 x 11 borderless from photoshop.

SORRY ABOUT THAT JOE I'LL GET YOU THAT INFO
THE THING IS A BEAST. QUALITY IS THE BEST.
I'M GOING TO REDO MY WHOLE PORTFILO

Joe
Xerox 6060

Very fast.

Documents can be produced on mixed media, i.e. you can program it to take one sheet from the heavy stock drawer (to use for your cover, let's say), and the others from the regular tray, or from the 11x17 tray.

We can print on 12x18 paper.
BOOKLET MAKER: No more folding and stapling! This will fold, score and saddle stitch your document. It will trim the sides so that there are no staggered sheets. Or, it will just fold...or just staple in whatever corner you wish...or give you 2 side staples. It will "impose" which means it will manipulate the pages so that the output looks like a book (hence the name). This is all controlled from the Fiery console.

I mean this thing can print books

I got an Epson Photo R300 for my grad school portfolio. I got it for a couple of reasons: Epson has the highest resolution in-house print quality- period. (I don't know a graphic designer who uses anything else for their high quality print work). On high quality glossy paper it prints at a film print quality- full bleed 8-1/2 x 11. I think the dpi is something like 1440 or 1600. That was a year ago now I am sure that they offer something more high quality now for a similar price (I paid about $180).

However, a few things that I didn't think about, which at the end of the day made it the wrong item for my particular portfolio. The only double-sided printing that you can do is on heavy matte bond. When you do that at a full bleed with lots of saturated color, the paper buckles and you end up getting black streaks at the very end. I can't tell you how long and how many sheets of paper I went through figuring that out! In retrospect I should have got an HP because that is the only company that I could find that makes a double-sided glossy paper. The print quality isn't as high, but print quality isn't everything, the double sided printing will save you time and money and it looks pretty sharp- better than matte I think. By the way, the inks and paper are proprietary to the system, so you can’t use hp paper with Epson ink.

On other item, not that I totally followed the rules, but the portfolio size submissions are usually 9" x 12" and not more than 3/4" thick total. I figured that since that vast majority of the submissions were like that why screw with the size- 8 1/2 x 11 seemed to work for the requirements. Although the ability to print 11x17 for other purposes would be advantageous about now...

Hello, my printer is an hp deskjet 1280 which I'm running on windows 7 using the driver of hp deskjet 1220c.

the problem is that I'm trying to print a booklet on indesign cs3 and the setup setting doesn`t allow me to choose the option "custom paper size", so I cannot print the booklet as an a3+.
 

any help?

Sorry to hear your having problems with your printer, but did you have to revive an almost 8 year old thread?

Why can't you download the 1280 driver for Windows 7?