I'm new here and just started digital scrapping. I just bought an HP Photosmart and am afraid that I am going to regret it because it doesn't have the separate colors, it just has the tri-color cartridge and black. What do you use? Should I return it? Thanks for any input, it's much appreciated

~Kristi

Hi Kristi! In my opinion, HP printer use the most ink. I've had Canon, Epson, and HP (currently have an HP 5150) and have discovered that Epson is the most ink-efficient. I like my HP well enough for now, but I plan to get an Epson once the budget allows! Others may have different ideas, this is just what I've seen after years of having ink jet printers! But there are other options to at-home printing if you want to keep the HP: places like Office Max, Costco, and even Walgreens can print photo quality layouts. Good luck!!
Daisy

What model is it?
I have the HP 7660 and it has space for two cartridges but it actually can use a combination of 4 cartridges. Black and white, greyscale photo , color and photo. I normally just have mine loaded with teh color and photo but i swap in the black and white if i am doing a lot of text printing or the greyscale if I am printing a black and white photo.
I find it perfectly economical. Just ignore it when it tells you on ethe screen your ink is low. I printed 10 more photos borderless ant 8.5 x11 before it actually started to run dry which you can tell by the colors running dry. I have printed probbaly 50 8x8 scrapbook pages on high gloss paper as well as around the same number of pictures a mixture of 6x4 and borderless 8.5 x 11 and miscellaneous amounts of text before having to change my cartridges yesterday n fact lol. So it lasted me close to 6 months.
High gloss paper uses less ink than printing on matte or normal paper btw.

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Shelleyrae. I just bought the Photosmart 2610xi at Costco. It's actually an all-in-one and scans great as well. I'm pretty happy with it but freaked out when I read an article in the Simple Scrapbooks digital mag. I was debating returning it to get an epson. I think I may want to print some 12x12 layouts. I didn't think about keeping the color and the photo in there! That's a great idea. Thanks for all the other info as well. By the way, I used your 8x8 baby girl pages to do an album for my mom for Christmas and it turned out fabulous!! I'm having so much fun with digital right now that I'm ignoring all the other stuff that I have.

Thanks so much! Kristi

Daisy, thanks for the info! I didn't think about having someone else print out my 12x12's. That way I don't have to buy the larger printer. I have so much stuff that I have bought that I want to continue scrapping non digital in my 12x12 but I created a layout that I really liked the other day that was digital so maybe I can have someone else print it out for me! Thanks for all the great info.

Kristi