best online printing for my parents

<p>Hello all,</p>

<p>I was unsure which forum to ask this question. If I am in the wrong one let me know.</p>

<p>My father, who is 70, just complained vehemently about the how fast he ran out of ink on his HP all in one printer. I had no real advice for him. He said he chose the ink saver settings and still the ink empty quicker then he though they should.<br>

My day is not extremel;y tech savy but he is the type to wrestle with the computer/printer until he know how to work it.</p>

<p>I mentioned that maybe he should use an online service. He only really prints 4x6's with a random larger print every now and then. I have used Mpix which I like but i was wondering which site would be best for a 70 year old man. A site that can maybe give online galleries and offer printing at fair prices wich is easy to use.</p>

<p>thank you for your time<br>

David</p>

<p>Well, I can't help you there, no personal experience. But I've read, and knew someone who used them, that Adorama's print service provides a very good print. User interface with their site, I can't comment on.</p>

<p>Your dad's experience was the reason that when I decided to buy a printer of my own, I shot for the moon with the Epson 3880. Yep, very large prints can be made. Yep, the machine cost over $1000. Yep, ink refills are expensive. But, ink refills for this machine, on a dollar-per-milliliter basis, are MUCH cheaper than for the printer that is the next model down in their product line due to buying the ink more in bulk, relatively speaking. (The 3880 ink tanks are over 7x larger in volume than the next smaller machine, at, if I recall, about half the cost per ml.) </p>

<p>Those small machines- they could about give them away for free, because it's replacement ink where, in my mind, the companies make all their money. The purchase price of the machine is just frosting on their cake. Yeah, it's a rip-off.</p>

<p>In the US, Walgreens (You can order direct ot through Snapfish and pick up there or mail order.), CVS, Walmart or Costco. MPIX would be a step up as would others, I have been generally satisfied with Walgreeens and Costco.<br>

If he uses Picasa for editing (free) it connects to all the major consumer online printers such as the ones I mentioned.<br>

Way easier and cheaper in the long run for basic stuff. 1-3 hrs turnaround at my Walgreens and Costco.</p>

<p><em>"Yeah, it's a rip-off."</em></p>

<p>Why is that? You have a killer printer that produces PRO quality, large prints. Based on what model, what should Epson charge per milliliter?</p>

<p>I also have a K3 printer at home and love it! Printing pro-quality at home isn't cheap, but it's pretty fulfilling to have a large format print portfolio.</p>

<p>I've used Adorama Propix online to good effect too. I doubt its interface would suit a beginner though (you have to upload and create libraries which could rapidly frustrate beginners).</p>

<p>Ken, I hope I wasn't misleading- I wasn't calling my printer a rip-off (I agree, it makes awesome prints), I was referring to the relatively low cost "hobby" or home use printers, such as the Epson 2880 and below, regardless of brand. Now the Epson 2880 (essentially a smaller version of my 3880, still a wonderful machine!) will be at the upper end of what I'd consider to be the hobby use with its price (of the machine), but the very small ink cartridges (11ml if I recall, about $14 each) add up quickly in their replacement cost, and it doesn't take many replacements to start feeling the pinch vs. the lower relative price of the larger ink cartridges. If someone is doing lots of printing, even small size prints, I'd suggest a printer buyer do some long term ink cost comparisons between the smaller printers and larger printers. If your printing demand justifies the larger machine based on long term ink costs, then it's worthwhile to buy the larger machine. Like I mentioned, for my 3880 (what Epson is calling the entry machine for advanced/pro/commercial use, 80ml ink tanks for about $50) I get over 7 times the ink for about half the per milliliter cost. With time, the cost difference for the larger machine will even be paid for just in ink expense savings. I'm paying about $0.62 per ml for my 3880 inks, the smaller Epson 2880 would be costing me $1.27 per ml. I'd have to buy $101 worth of the smaller ink cartridges to get the same volume of ink in my larger cartridge. If it weren't for this issue only, if the price per volume were similar, I would not have bought larger than the Epson 2880.</p>

<p>Heck, my first general purpose inkjet printer from 10 years ago (Lexmark) had ink that cost $35 per cartridge (it used 4 cartridges), and I typically had a hard time even getting a couple hundred sheets of "home use" text printings out of it (by that, I mean I wasn't printing off full pages of text or photos, just brief, memo-type print jobs). I paid $150 or so for the machine, in just a couple years I bought that machine more than twice in ink costs. I'm really off topic now, but I replaced that printer with a black-only Brother laser printer for $160, it's had probably 5000 sheets go through it and it's still on the original toner cartridge. It's this cost breakdown that lead me to buy the Epson 3880 instead of one of the smaller photo printers, to stretch my ink dollars.</p>

<p>I agree with Mark. I use Walgreens to print my 4x6's, since there is one near work and I can upload the prints from home. If I'm shipping prints to relatives, I will upload the prints to the Walgreens nearest their house and not have to pay for shipping. A few years ago, I had some horrible experiences with Walmart with them changing the colours and boosting up the saturation, but so far, my local Walgreens has been spot on.</p>

<p>Now, for prints that I want to frame, I go to mpix.com, because I feel that they have the best looking prints, but for 4x6's I don't need the absolute quality level, and getting the prints the same day is more important. At times I still use a home printer to get shots immediately, but when you figure in ink costs, Walgreens will beat my HP printer at 4x6" prints (the cost changes for 8x10" and often you can do it cheaper at home). Particularly if I'm printing a lot of prints, I don't want to have to deal with home printing (and Walgreens usually has some special for online prints that makes large number of prints much cheaper).</p>

<p>On the other hand, there are some prints you don't want printed at external sites, and it is better to print those at home.</p>