Digital BW, The Print

I have a 7960 and a room full of Epson printers. I was very intrigued 
by the photoblack which I knew would allow me to make some Glossy BW 
prints.

Comparing the 7960 to the 1160 is weird...the 1160 is a 10 year old 
printer (but on really good matte paper with MIS or Piezo inks, it 
will definitely hold it's own against the 7960 in print quality) and 
it definitely requires some care and feeding to use inks in it that 
were not part of the design (i.e. pigment ink). That said, most 
people haven't had too much trouble keeping it working fine.

Let's talk about the 7960...very expensive ink...very...buy your 
cartridges by the dozen, at least. Very intrusive software...it wants 
to load everything under the sun...if you buy one, ignore all 
installation instructions and simply add a printer from in the print 
driver function of your computer...DO NOT LOAD and HP software...very 
quirky and unstable for me at least. 

7960 print quality may turn out to be ok...so far I'm finding a 
bluish cast to BW rgb prints that I don't like at all. I've also 
found that most papers require you to "catch" them one at a time and 
set them out to dry individually for at least an hour before they are 
ready to be handled at all. At the fine print setting, it prints very 
very slow. Changing the carts in and out from photo to black is 
somewhat more cumbersome than the Epson 2200 and wastes a little ink 
as well. (printing text with the photo cart isn't really an 
option...it winds up as gray text).

All of that said, I may keep the 7960 for the ocassional glossy 8x10 
and for the extra tray for holding 4x6 paper for the ocassional 
snanpshot sized pic that can still be a very good desktop text 
printer, but it just doesn't measure up for a production printer of 
quality BW photos.

Remember the 7960 is limited to letter sized prints. I don't know the 
epsons that are letter size printers, but I think there are a number 
of them now that have most of the technology of the 2200 (4000, 7600, 
9600). You might want to consider one of these printers...you will 
have the benefit of the installed base and expertise of the users of 
the above printers (not a small factor when I made my first choices 
in just about the same position you are in today ((btw, mine was a 
1270 followed by a few 1160s for BW). Espon printers allow a lot of 
flexibility in the way of third party ink, commercial RIPs (if that 
ever interests you) and this forum (not a epson forum but by far the 
largest following here).

Whatever you get, stop back here...there will surely be someone who 
can help you work through issues (you will have some issues with ANY 
printer <g>).

cheers,

Tom O'Connell



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Mark Hahn" 
<markhahn2000@y...> wrote:
> Have you concluded this yourself or are you repeating what is shown 
> on *one* website review????  When I tested both printers the 
> dither/banding was identical on both printers and several HP reps 
> have said that that part of the driver is identical, only the color 
> handling is different (and the heads are of course identical).
> 
> mark