Inkjet Printer: End of the Year Roundup

HP Deskjet 3820: Quality At An Affordable Price

Small and inexpensive, the Deskjet 3820 is based on the same system as the previous generation of HP Inkjet printers. Enough said?

On the shelves at 149 euros or US$99, the Deskjet 3820 is not an expensive purchase. It is also stylish, takes up little room, can be plugged into a USB or parallel port and prints in PhotoRet III. So it's a good little printer for users who don't need a lot of ink.

Epson Stylus C62: Middling Price, Middling Results

The C62 is a middling printer: middling cost, middling ink consumption, middling speed and quality. It competes with the Canon i320 and HP Deskjet 3820.

Epson announced their new printers in August along with the great news that they come with a record resolution of 5760 dpi. Three months later, they were finally on the shelves. The C62 is a middle-range printer, democratically priced at US$99 or 99 euros. It works fast but not exceedingly well and costs a lot in ink. In photo mode, though, it is pretty good, at least for a printer in this price range.

Speaking of price, the price is in inverse proportion to its size. The C62 is a bulky machine, though it does, like Canon but unlike HP, have an integrated transformer, an advantage point for Epson.

Cancelled out as you realize as soon as it runs that the C62 lacks discretion; in fact, it is noisy.

To make matters worse, as soon as one cartridge is empty, you will not get the printer to work until you have replaced it. So, if you are out of color but urgently need to print a black and white document, forget it! This printer is a moron. And Epson has the nerve to talk about smart printers. If that is the only purpose of the cartridge chip, then please take it out, Mr. Epson.

Otherwise, at the back there is the parallel port and the USB 1.1.